Souls Disappear in the Snow
by Masamune Reforged
Summary: They crashland in the Artic. An unforgiving winter traps them relationships strain, tempers flare, old bonds are broken and new emotions boil to the surface. All too soon they become aware of something dark and sinister around, and perhaps inside, them.
1. Prologue Crashing

Souls Disappear in the Snow – A GW fanfic-

Masamune Reforged I do not own Gundam Wing, nor any of the characters from Gundam Wing.

Warnings: Yaoi (Established 3x4, upcoming 1x2 and...), angst, some violence and cursing. Later chapters will include character torture, supernatural elements, psychological dilemmas and possibly main character death…depends on how I'm feeling.

Archive: if you want to post this fic, or any of my other works, feel free to do so.

Note: I have revised this entire story, meaning there are many changes, some new scenes (an entirely new chapter in the early part of the story). So if you read it before and are just reading the most recent parts, you might want to go back and check out the old parts or risked being confused.

PROLOGUE- Crashing

"HAHAHAHA! Shinigami is back in action! OZ better watch out, I'll bring death to each and everyone one of them! Yo Heero, how many do you think I'll get on the next mission? Two, three hundred? HAHAHA."

Duo as usual. Loud, jovial and screaming about being the Shinigami… Even though the thought of the braided teenager reaping the souls of fallen OZ soldiers may seem a bit unsettling, I'd gotten quite used to it. It was sort of an ongoing joke, or some kind of self-invented fantasy the American was playing out, sometimes too intensely. In the end, his unending conversations and babbling did get to be annoying. Duo had always been strange in my eyes but I'd never thought much of it… I'd really always tried to ignore him as much as possible.

We were going to outer space. Since OZ basically controlled all of the Earth, our orders were changed. We would face OZ there, back in the colonies, the very place we'd came from and were fighting so desperately for.

"Rashid do you read me?" Quatre shouted, the small boy's voice only barely louder than the rumbling engines of the small shuttle that the five of us were uncomfortably crammed into.

"Ye-," Came the garbled reply, as Rashid's face appeared on the video screen for a moment, then was cut off by static as lines of white and black ran angrily down the monitor. " Goo….uck……tre-sama!"

"Shinigami back in action! It's been so long, I feel like a virgin on a high school football player's prom night!" Duo had been cheery, to say the least, when he first heard we were going back into combat. He hadn't quite been himself during the long downtime when OZ had kept us at bay by threatening to destroy the colonies.

"The transmitter is all messed up!" Heero yelled over the roar from his place in the pilot's seat. "Trowa!"

"We're almost ready to take off," Trowa answered the Wing pilot in a soft voice, so soft that Heero had no hope of hearing the slender Latin boy over Duo's excited yelling and the engine's screaming. Trowa was towards the back of the shuttle with me. Currently he was running last minute diagnostic tests on the cabin pressure.

"Nani!" Heero yelled back, clearly he hadn't heard.

"…and then ALL those OZ bastards will meet their maker! Good riddance!"

"It'll just be another minute!" Trowa raised his voice a little…

"Shinigami never EVER loses!"

"Nani!" Heero shouted back, his face growing even redder as the engines gained power.

"What?" Trowa replied back in equal confusion.

"Man I can't wait to get back into Deathscythe and tear around like…"

"Nan… DUO SHUT UP!" Heero screamed, his voice carrying even over the loud blast of the engines.

"HE SAID ONE MORE MINUTE!" I finally decided to interject and end the stupid confusion before it gave me a headache. "And be quiet already Maxwell! K'so! You could wake the dead!"

I don't think Duo heard me, but he did fall silent. There was only so much I could take of that mouth running the way it did. Nonstop chatter, incessantly rambling about this and that and Deathscythe and Shinigami… But for now, Duo was quiet. He looked straight ahead at the back of Heero's head and seemed to be mumbling something to himself.

I suddenly felt like apologizing. Of course, not that I was actually going to give that braided idiot an apology; but I did feel sorry for him. I knew that the sad look on his face was more from Heero's yelling at him than my scolding… Everything Heero did affected Duo more…

"Alright!" Trowa said loudly, looking up from the blinking consoles in front of him. "Go."

"Nani?" Heero again. I swear I could have killed him.

"He said GO!" I yelled again and no sooner had the words passed my lips then Heero had us in the air. My head and probably everyone else's was thrown back violently as the small shuttle began to skyrocket into the air. Even as I grumbled a curse at Yuy I thanked the Gods that we were finally on our way.

"Now could we please have some _silence_ on this trip?" Heero growled darkly, turning for a second to snap at Duo. "If you just keep quiet for once in your life it'll help everything go smoothly."

That's when the little red alarm light above my head went off. I didn't believe in Fate or irony at the time, but it damn well seemed that Heero had just jinxed us.

"K'so! What the fuck's wrong now?" Heero now directed his anger at Trowa. The glare he shot the Heavyarms pilot was enough to make even me cringe, but Trowa just shrugged and went to hitting buttons on the panels in front of him.

The alarm kept blinking. "WELL?" Heero yelled in agitation after what seemed like eternity but was only three seconds.

"We don't have any fuel," The way Trowa said it he could have been talking about the clouds that we were currently entering. "We won't make it out of Earth's gravitational pull."

"A leak?" Heero asked furiously, turning back to the controls as the shuttle began to sputter and the engines whined. I started saying a silent prayer to my ancestors to get me the hell out of here…

"I don't remember fueling this ship at all," Quatre said, his meek voice even smaller in the blinking red blare and the sputtering engines. I felt sick.

"I thought you were supposed to fuel it Wufei!" Heero lashed out at me.

"You never said anything about fueling the damned shuttle!" I yelled back, my temper rising with my fear. In a mobile suit, especially Nataku, one has quite a bit more bravery than when beginning to plummet to the earth in a rickety, old space shuttle.

"I…didn't?" Heero asked himself aloud. The look on his face would have been priceless if we all weren't about to die.

"No! You didn't!" I retorted quickly. It was true; he never did ask me to fuel the ship.

"Let's just turn around and land back at the port we took off from," Duo suggested helpfully, a glimmer of hope at the end of a dark, dark tunnel.

"We're almost ten hundred million miles North of that point," Trowa put the light out in one quick blow… "And we don't even have enough fuel to turn around…"

At the time I remember feeling lots of things. I remembered how my uncle had taught me to burn incense for the dead back at the family shrine on L5. I wondered if anyone would do that for me? What would happen to our Gundams? We'd already sent them ahead into space at the rendezvous with the Maganacs… How would the war turn out? Would I meet Merian in the afterlife?

I heard Trowa curse out loud and unbuckle his belt. I turned to yell at him but a sharp rock of the ship made me focus on the status of my stomach rather than on my comrade. I felt like I was going to puke.

Suppressing nausea, I saw Trowa by the chair where Quatre was, their hands entwined tightly and Trowa whispering words that where for his blond love only. I don't think anyone besides Quatre could hear them anyway, the siren was loud enough to drown out anything and accompanied by the whining and mechanic groans of the ship, the racket was almost deafening.

Looking at the two lovers made me think about how pathetic of a way this was to die. Crashing to the Earth because of an empty fuel tank was not a warrior's death. I had no control in the situation. I hated that. I hated being powerless and at the mercy of whimsical fate. Would this be my exit from the world?

Heero was focused completely on the controls, his hands in a grip that turned his knuckles chalk-white as he grunted and cursed. Looking at our altitude, I figured we all had another thirty seconds left before we landed, either in a smoldering pile of rubble… or… What was that sound?

It wasn't the siren, and it wasn't the control panel or any other warning sound. I thought that maybe the shuttle was breaking apart….but frankly I'd never heard metal make that kind of sound… and I hoped I never would…

Duo was laughing.

The siren was screaming and the shuttle shook in a metallic spasm as we hurtled to the ground. But Duo's insane laughter managed to carry over all the noise, making me even more sick to my stomach. It was far removed from an appreciation of irony or nervous distress manifesting in guffaws. It was genuine mirth, actual merriment derived directly from our impending end.

I thought, Maxwell's cracked.

Another siren came on, one I could identify. The sound was an artificially produced buzzing noise, higher in pitch and repeating over and over again, multiple times, it's rate steadily growing faster. I couldn't tell if another light had begun to blink or some other warning sign appear on the console. There were too many blinking lights already to note any difference. But this particularly shrill siren began to screech in short bursts, and as the furious pace picked up rapidly, I prepared myself for what I knew was coming.

I can't remember the crash.

All I know is that I was thrown about like a rag doll in my seat, my restraining belt the only thing preventing me from being killed instantly. Then everything faded away to black…

…and when I woke up, it was all white.

-end prologue

-start "Souls Disappear in the Snow"

Masamune Reforged


	2. 1 Blinding White

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and...), angst, violence, supernatural, cursing,  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to The pilots are being sent to space to fight OZ there after a long break in missions. While enroute, their shuttle fails and crashes to Earth. Wufei is the narrator.

Part 1- Blinding White

Black.

White.

There was nothing but white when I opened my eyes. Blinding me, the expanse of colorlessness seemed to never end. For a moment I thought that I was dead and that this was…afterlife?

_...whoosh..._

There was a sound. Can the dead hear? Maybe, I decided. Maybe I wasn't dead… although I couldn't honestly say I felt alive either.

_...whoosh..._

I could almost hear hushed voice, whispered words floating among the howling wind.

Wind?

"Where am I?" I asked the endless white expanse, not even beginning to see the absurdity of the question.

The wind howled back in return; but this time a sharp sting of wet and cold shock passing over my body accompanied it. Blinking my eyes, I tried to sit upright. An incredibly sharp pain in my torso threw me into a fit of pain, and for a moment, I almost became unaware of the snow falling all around me.

Snow?

Almost in answer to my silent confusion something small, almost invisible and white, became stuck in my eyelashes. I didn't even try to brush away the solitary flake. I felt so lifeless and hurt.

I was slowly awakening to the world. My vision became better and even my hearing returned almost to its normal level, despite my ears almost being frozen solid. I suddenly had a much better grasp of what was going on and where I was.

Preparing to go into space, the confusion on board the small shuttle, the crash. The not so distant memories struggled to come back to mind. I could remember Quatre or somebody saying that we were very far north… We'd obviously crashed into one of the more inhospitable regions. That was nice and logical. But there were quite a few things that were still unexplained and quickly filled me with fear and dread.

First, how long can I last out here? Second, where are the others?

Rationally thinking, they were all dead. It was a lone miracle that I was still alive. But if I had survived… A second tremor of pain cut off my thoughts. The biting cold would soon finish me off…

I tried to stand, trying to ignore the intense pain that was shredding my chest apart. But the second I put my left foot into the deep snow to support myself, a pain that quickly wiped away everything else nearly knocked me unconscious, and easily felled me to the ground with a pitiful cry that I could hardly acknowledge as my own.

I lay there in a heap for a good long time, shivering in the cold, doing about as much as I could just to keep myself awake. Something deep inside of me wanted just to lie down and sleep, curl up in the snow and forget the pain. And in a way, the tundra seemed to make a nice place to lay one's head.

White. Even when I closed my eyes, I could still see the searing shine off the snow. The wind was becoming like background, as if it had always been a part of my life. And for a while I couldn't remember a time that I hadn't been alone like this, dying in the cold heartless element.

I managed to turn myself over onto my back, the pressure on my chest gratefully relieved. The cold snow fell down towards me and I shivered whenever it landed on my face. I couldn't believe that this was my fate, that I was going to die like this, freezing to death in the northernmost pit of hell.

_...whoosh... whoosh..._

I listened to the breath of the earth. My eyes felt heavy. I could swear I heard voices in the wind.

"Wufei."

What the hell?

"Wufei."

I propped myself up and looked around, desperately searching for the voice. Squinting and trying to pick out anything different amongst the sea of white, I felt my heart rise in hope for the first time since I had awoken. Someone was out there. The others were alive and looking for me!

"HEY!" I shouted, screaming into the howling wind, which seemed to roar up just in time to dwarf my yell. "I'M OVER HERE!"

Hoping to catch a glimpse of whomever it was that was still out there I managed to pull myself up somewhat, hardly able to bear the searing pain in my leg. I looked all around me, only finding the blinding white snow.

"DUO! HEERO! TROWA! QUATRE! I'M OVER HERE!" Yelling out the names of my fellow pilots the thought arose that maybe not all of them had made it out alive. But regardless, the fact that at least one of them was alive was more than enough to give me the strength to yell again.

Minutes passed and as the only thing that answered me was the occasional gust of wind and sharp sting of snow I started to wonder if what I'd heard had only been a mirage. My voice grew hoarse, I shouted less often... It seemed pointless to shout for help to the emptiness. And besides, I thought while I looked around me, if I can't see them anywhere… what's the chance that they'd be able to see me?

White.

It was still the only thing I could see, although for a minute there seemed to be a small difference between the absolute blinding white of the space around me, and the faintly blue-tinted infinity above me. Maybe I was just cracking up, going crazy, knowing that without some miraculous, fleeting chance of aid; I'd be dead in less than a few hours.

"Get a hold of yourself!" I said aloud. "You're not so weak as to just lay here and die!"

No, a true Chang warrior wouldn't just lay here and die. But with a broken leg and probably a few other injuries, I wasn't going to be moving for a while. So with nothing to do but hope and wait for either death or the impossible, I lay down in the snow again.

Comfortable as one can be in negative degree weather, I hoped to pass the time by thinking of what exactly I would do if I managed to get out of all this alive. Helplessness is a thing I'd always categorized along with weakness and cowardice. Being helpless means you have no power and can't do anything. Only the weak have no power, only cowards don't take action. All the helpless can do is wait for someone to tell them what to do or do something for them.

But feeling as helpless as I was, lying there, it didn't feel half bad. Having no options and no control over my situation was almost relieving in a sad sort of way. Even the power to move around on my own had been taken from me. For the first time that I could remember, there were absolutely zero responsibilities that I had to fight to fulfill.

Maybe going to sleep would be the best thing… And so I shut my eyes.

Black.

"WUFEI!"

White.

I bolted upright so fast that the blood rushed out of my head and for a moment I was even more disoriented than when I'd first awoken… Was someone calling me?

"WUFEI! CAN YOU HEAR ME!"

Quatre. Not a mirage this time, Quatre's voice managed to lift over the wind. Gods, it sounded like he was nearby. Frantically I looked around me, praying to catch a glimpse of my comrade. But to my sickening dismay, all I saw was that same wretched color.

"WUFEI!" It sounded so close by, so desperate. Still, as much as I squinted my eyes, I couldn't make out anything through the shield of snow that seemed almost solid around me. I stood up as best I could and yelled out into the wind.

"QUATRE!" I screamed, hoping that he'd be able to hear me over the loud wind. "QUATRE!"

"I thought I heard him Duo! I think he's over here somewhere," It was Quatre's voice, clear as day.

"We can't stay out here much longer! We're gonna freeze to death!" This time it was another, a deeper voice.

"But I'm sure he's still alive! I thought I just heard him!" Quatre said back, but as if he were talking to someone fairly close to him. "We have to find him!"

"You said you thought you heard him before! And…" Duo's words were blurred out as another loud gust of wind obliterated all sounds.

Why can't I see them? I asked myself vehemently in confusion. They sounded so close; but I still couldn't see even a hint of anything but snow and ice. I'm not going to die out here! I thought I heard their voices coming from over to the left…

I tried to take a step forward and then another. The pain in my leg was tremendous and I grunted in pain every time I stepped down with my left foot. Staggering towards where I though they must be, I put my hands to my mouth and shouted again.

I can't feel my hands or legs anymore, I thought.

"Wufei?" Duo this time, sounding very surprised. It sounded as if he were even closer now. Then after a moment's pause and a wave of stinging snow, "Wufei! Where are you? I can't see you!"

"I can't see you either dammit!" I yelled back angrily.

"It sounds like he's right below us," Quatre said.

Below them? What? What the- Limping forward I looked around in confusion. My foot slipped on ice. Hopelessly trying to balance I stuck my hands out, instinctively looking for something to catch myself on and found myself. ………………… still standing?

"Sons of bitches," I snarled, my anger settling in along with the pain and numb chill. I pushed back off the ice wall and looked at it, squinting as the wind picked up again. Everything clicked in just a single moment.

I couldn't see Quatre or Duo because I was down in some kind of pit or crevice. The endless white expanse was just thick sheets of snow and ice, giving the illusion of wide-open plains. I felt like such an idiot.

I heard laughter, and looking up saw, not too high above, a figure clad totally in black, Duo.

"How the hell did you get all the way down there?" He laughed, a smile on his face along with bits of snow.

"Quit laughing you bastard!" I shouted angrily, not seeing any of the humor. I was in far too foul a mood. "It's not funny at all! I'm going to fucking freeze to death!"

But all my shouts and curses gained from Duo was more laughter. It was almost like he was getting a kick out of this entire shitty situation. Limping closer to the solid barrier of ice, I kept my head upwards, scanning the surface for a foothold to climb up. Quatre came over to the crevice's edge.

"Wufei!" Yelling to me with joy in his voice, Quatre looked to be wearing either a coat ten times the size of him or a ratty brown blanket. "Hold on a minute, I've got a rope."

Salvation, rescue, miracle, life. I'm going to live. Thank the gods, I'm not going to die here.

A rope came dangling down, and for a minute all I could do was stare at it; unable to believe I was going to live. Shaking snow from my hands I coughed and the pain in my chest flared up, making me cringe in pain.

"Are you OK Wufei? Grab the rope." Quatre sounded worried and urgent, and I quickly thought about Heero and Trowa. Where were they?

"I think I broke a few things," I said in reply, although I don't know if either Duo or Quatre heard because an insanely powerful gust of wind blew through the crevice and seemed to carry my words away with it. I took hold of the rope and, careful not to use my bad leg, began to pull myself up.

Even if you get out of this pit, who says you're going to live?

Brushing away the dark thought, I tried to keep myself focused, feeling weaker as I climbed. Taking a deep breath of cold, I neared the top. A hand came into my field of vision and I grabbed it. Feeling myself being pulled up more than I was pulling myself, a blur crossed my vision and I felt lightheaded.

Blinking, I looked around, surprised to find myself out of the crevice that had nearly been my grave. A familiar face crossed my sight and I smiled weakly at Duo, dropping to one knee.

"You going to be alright?" He asked, his voice distant and too far away to hear very well. My eyes roamed around, looking at the beautiful scenery through an ever-increasing blur. Any houses? Any people, anything? No. Only snow and ice and the same bright color.

White.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I answered.

I slumped forward, but didn't feel my face hit the ground.

Black.

-end "Blinding White" Part 1 of

Souls Disappear in the Snow  
please send all feedback and comments to 


	3. 2 Refuge

Souls Disappear in the Snow

- by masamune reforged I do not own Gundam Wing, nor any of the characters from Gundam Wing.

Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and...), angst, violence, supernatural, cursing,  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.

Recap: Just as they were about to begin missions against OZ in space, the pilots' shuttle crashes to Earth. Wufei is badly injured and lost in the frozen tundra. He is found by Quatre and Duo and passes out

Part 2- Refuge

Awakening was a horrible experience. I guess it was the fact that I'd been through the frozen equivalent of hellish torment for the past few… minutes? Hours? How long? I wasn't sure of how long it'd been since the crash, the graceless fall that had left me in the brutal cold, with only my insecurities and fears. It all felt very far away and fuzzy, like a memory from childhood or an escaping dream. But collapsing on the frozen steppe was the last thing I could remember.

Returning to the world of the living, I was quickly washed over by a host of feelings, emotions, questions that all seemed to prick my brain sinisterly as they flowed relentlessly, taking the question of time with them, buoying out into the great sea of consciousness.

I asked myself: Where am I?

Pain.

Once again I asked myself: Am I alive?

Pain.

For the countless number of times I asked myself: What's wrong with me?

My head hurts.

My chest hurts.

My leg hurts.

I came to the conclusion: I must be alive if I'm feeling this kind of pain. 

I hurt.

This time I asked myself: Where am I?

My head hurts.

This time I sought the answer desperately: What the hell's wrong with me?

My chest hurts.

This time I confusedly asked: Who the is asking all these questions?

My leg hurts like hell.

And I answered:

I am."

I had to focus. Everything going on inside of my head didn't make sense. I needed something concrete to grip onto. Asking myself questions wasn't helping. I quickly decided that whatever was going on in my muddled mind would resolve itself in time. I had to get a grasp on what was happening around me, what happened after the crash, what happened after I blacked out in the blizzard.

"Where am I?" I finally asked out loud.

I tried to make it as simple as possible; my head couldn't take much. I pushed everything to the back of my mind; hopefully it wouldn't create such a stir there. Instead of letting myself drown in the chaotic discords taking over my head, I tried to find solutions to them in the place surrounding me.

I was in a barren room, lying under heavy blankets that smelled musty and long kept. Aside from the overly large bed that I lay in, the room was furnished only with a hulking brown dresser and a chair which Trowa was seated in, absentmindedly looking out the only window in the entire room.

"Hey," I said to get his attention. He didn't respond, continuing to gaze outwards. "Hey Trowa."

Turning almost in surprise, the uni-banged pilot almost rose out of his seat at the sound of my voice. He gazed blankly at me for a moment, blinked a couple times, and said nothing.

"Are you alright?" I asked, slightly irritated by what I somehow thought was his gawking at me.

"Eh, I'm fine," He answered in a low voice. "But I should be the one asking you. How are you feeling?"

"My leg hurts like hell," I replied simply.

"It's broken," Trowa said blankly.

"Wonderful." I quipped. I tried to move it around, feeling the heavy splints restricting my movement. I gritted my teeth as I lifted it.

Trowa turned his chair to face me. There was no sound but my own breathing and the scratch of the legs on the wooden floor. It was the first time I noticed just how quiet it was in the room. There was no buzzing electricity, no whir of machinery, no chattering voices, no birds, no wind, no leaves falling to the ground outside. It had been a long time since I'd witnessed silence of this magnitude.

"Those splints feel like Heero put them on, tight as hell..." I grunted as I raised the blankets with my injured leg. "Eh, well it's a good thing you didn't take me to a hospital. The enemy would have been all over us if you'd done that." I paused, looked around again and asked, "Which safehouse is this?"

Trowa shook his head slowly, never a good sign. "We're not at a safehouse. And it's a miracle we're all still alive, especially you."

A convulsive swallow of relief made me realize how thirsty I was. "Everyone's alive then?"

He nodded, putting to rest the concerns I'd had about the others. The truth was that after meeting and getting to know the other Gundam pilots, I'd never thought much about any of us dying. It just seemed like one of those impossible things, or one of those things you list as impossible for your own peace of mind. I'd almost taken it as a given that we'd all survive, no matter what crazy happenstance came about. Naïve of me really, we're all still just flesh and blood. We don't last forever.

"Where are we?" I asked again. This time I left the question open for Trowa to answer any way he wished.

"I'm not sure," In the same mundane voice he answered, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them. You could see his breath in the air. "We more or less stumbled on this place. It's apparently been abandoned for a while. There's a huge pantry, well stocked, we don't need to worry about basic supplies. Right now we're trying to get electricity. I was working in the basement on it for awhile but decided to give Quatre a break from watching you. He's been…"

The solemn voice of my lanky comrade died off, his rare words wasted on my deaf ears. I wasn't listening to him, my own thoughts taking all the attention. I decided that it'd be ungrateful to wish for too much now. Being alive was incredible enough. I lay there for another minute or so, dwelling on the marvelous luck of the situation. Not only were we ALL alive, but we had food and shelter.

And where were we supposed to be right now? Up in space, fighting the enemy. Our Gundams… shit. What the hell happened to Nataku? We hadn't gone up into space with them, sending them ahead of us to somewhere or another through a source the Doctors considered "safe". Well, regardless of where our mobile suits were, we weren't in them. Our plans scrapped, this was going to prove an unwieldy setback.

"Have we managed to get in touch with our allies yet?" I asked Trowa, hoping he'd have a positive answer.

The slow shake of the head came again… obviously more bad news…

"We left most of our gear at the crash site. The shuttle was beyond repair," Trowa seemed to look past me while speaking, a vacant stare absorbing nothing. "We carried what we could, including a small transmitter Heero grabbed. It doesn't seem to want to work though…"

"What about Heero's laptop?" I inquired about the Japanese boy's most coveted item.

"…At one point, while we were out there, the storm got pretty intense…" Trowa drifted off for a moment, leaving me with only a vague idea about what exactly had happened. I'd managed to collect the theme that the laptop was gone though.

Finally, as if awaking from a dream, he continued, "We lost each other. The snow got heavier. There was zero visibility… The wind was whipping it around, creating confusion and blinding us. We weren't prepared for those conditions at all."

"Yeah, I know," I coldly replied, shivering under all of my blankets.

"Eventually we all managed to find each other," Trowa went on, "...except for Duo... Heero went out to get him and came back with none of the stuff he'd been carrying. But Duo was with him."

His green eyes met mine for a minute and he stopped speaking. Something between us conveyed that there was no need to talk about what had gone on out there. It was plainly painful for him, and I wasn't getting a whole lot out of it either.

There was one thing though, one of dire importance that I needed to ask Trowa.

"Um…Trowa? Where's the nearest bathroom?"

- - - - -

I stayed in bed for a good part of the day. Trowa was relieved from watching me by Quatre, who was later relieved by Duo. Repeatedly I tried to get out of bed and walk around. I felt restless despite the terrible pain in my leg. My headache was fading, as was the slight pain in my chest, probably just bruises. I couldn't lie still in the overly large bed.

It puzzled me that the others felt the need to have someone watch over me. I can say honestly that I was annoyed by their concern for me, especially on the part of Quatre. I knew that it was only out of kindness that the Sandrock pilot worried so much… but it still ticked me off.

Duo would later provide the answer to why I was being watched so carefully.

- - - - - 

"You gave us one hell of a scare Fei-man, passing out like that. You were out like a light and your vital signs were real weak. You were soaked, sweating and shivering and we knew we had to get you inside or you'd be a goner... Luckily we found this place." Duo smiled while he recounted how I had almost died. "We started a fire to get you warm, and things were looking alright."

Then, tilting his head slightly to the side, peering at me crookedly, Duo's gaze sharpened and he said, "But then you started running a real bad fever and started muttering stuff in your sleep. Really made us freak. We thought maybe the crash had, I dunno, done something to your head."

"I what?" I asked, confused and perplexed. "What 'stuff'? I don't talk in my sleep!" Baring my teeth I snarled out the last part, offended that my comrades had thought I'd snapped. I was perfectly fine and besides, I never had said anything in my sleep before.

"Oh, you bet you do Fei-man," He smiled, bouncing down into the rickety old chair near the bed. "You talk a hell of a lot."

"I do not talk in my sleep," I reiterated softly, but with a growing menace that I almost couldn't recognize, rising in my voice. "I've never talked in my sleep." Duo enjoyed fucking with people, and I hated to be fucked with.

Shrugging and putting on the face named 'don't get upset at me', Duo stayed calm and just said, "Yes Fei-man, you do."

"Dammit, look Maxwell!" I lost my temper. Anger clouded over the pain in my ribs as I sat upright, jerking in his direction. "I don't EVER talk in my sleep! I never have! And stop calling me Fei-man!"

A teasing spark in his amethyst eyes, Duo leaned forward, grinning widely and obviously enjoying my little fit. "No need to get so uptight, Fe…Wufei. But you were talking in your sleep, a hell of a lot too." Forcing myself to breathe I let him continue, wanting to interject or smack him upside his smirking face. "It wasn't the fact that you talk in your sleep, it was the stuff you were saying."

He leaned back in his chair then, as if content with everything around. I was still perplexed and angry, but my hostility was quickly changing to curiosity. What exactly had I said?

"Nothing in any language I'd heard before," Duo stared at me evenly, seriously. "Not Chinese or anything Heero or Quatre could recognize. Sometimes it sounded more like a- like not human."

Unknowingly dropping my jaw a little, my expression asked the question for me.

"Yeah. Really weird stuff," He smiled, crossing his legs in the seat and jiggling one repeatedly up and down. It was as if he couldn't stay still. "A lot of the time you just muttered to yourself. Not like you don't mumble to yourself when you're not bananas... But usually it's about justice and cowards and well... not like that..."

He looked at me, wary. He was still unsure of my state of mind. Despite the intense disbelief about his story, some part of me had to trust my comrades. Duo wouldn't make this up or pull my leg in this manner. He was dead serious.

"So you thought I was going to go nuts and kill you all?" I cynically questioned.

"You're always nuts Fei-man," Duo snickered. "But Heero thought it would be best if we kept an eye on you. He thought… you might try to do something to yourself." His face fell at the end, unable to look me straight on.

I brushed aside my doubts and thoughts on the sleep-talking phenomenon, labeling it as weird at best and filing it in the dusty archives of the past. Compared to rehabilitating my leg and getting back to missions, it really wasn't that important. It was strange that I might have said something in my sleep, but it wasn't going to prey on my mind. Some things just never make complete sense. My pride was a little wounded, perhaps, and the thought of Heero distrusting me was uncomfortable.

I casually looked out the lone window. Darkness blanketed the never-ending plains already, snowflakes falling slowly to the ground. The wintry night was here. I sighed, bored to say the least. The room was almost pitch black. Duo, clad all in black, was nearly invisible to me.

"Where is Heero anyway?" I wondered aloud. He was the only one I hadn't seen since the crash.

There was a buzz and a deep whir from somewhere in the house. The bare light bulb hanging above sparked to life and the room was bathed in half-light, shadows virtually nonexistent in the mostly empty space.

- - - - -

We found Heero downstairs, in a giant room beyond comparison. With quite a bit of coaxing, and even more vehement demands, I'd gotten Duo to let me walk around a bit. It wasn't like I could walk very well, my leg buckling underneath my weight on the first step I tried to take, but I got around. Heero was in a corner of the huge room, amidst a pile of tools and electronics. I made my way by using the walls as support. 

"And then Heero Yuy said, Let there be light!" Duo blasphemed cheerily, almost bouncing over to the spot where Heero was intently laboring. "Is there anything you can't do? Trowa told me there'd be no way we'd get electricity for at least a day or two."

"I need light to see what I'm doing," Heero blandly answered, not even glancing at the energetic American.

"What?" Faking despair, Duo cringed. "You can't see in the dark? I thought that was standard issue in the Heero Yuy superhuman Perfect Soldier model, along with those ridiculous spandex shorts."

"Sorry to disappoint you," Heero disdainfully snapped back, tugging at a wire extending out of a large metal box. It appeared to be a portable radio from the shuttle. The antenna was nowhere to be seen and there were several scorch marks on one side. "But I'm human just like you."

Tsking and slowly shaking his head, Duo answered solemnly, like one scolding a small child, "You should know by now Heero, there's a big difference between us. You might be scary and all that, but I'm Shinigami."

Heero looked up at Duo, saying something or another in reply. I didn't really hear it; I wasn't paying much attention. I'd seen this play out before. In fact, I automatically pulled several different ways this particular scenario would probably end out of my head without even trying. They all ran along the same general plot line:

1. Heero is working on something or other relevant to the mission.

2. Duo comes along and distracts/annoys him.

3. A conversation or an argument or small skirmish ensues

4. Heero cannot concentrate on his task- they continue as before

5. Either Duo gets bored and walks away (rare case), Heero drives him off with one thing or another, or-

_-SNAP-_

"Fuck!"

-or Heero messes up on the task he was working at, various calamity ensues.

"Uh oh," Duo knew just as well as I did what the consequences were.

Heero rose slowly, anger and frustration issuing from his body language like water from a creaking dam. The fury in his Prussian blue eyes was evident, even though I was looking at the back of his head. Duo got the wrath dead on. All was silent. I even held my breath, not wanting to be the one to break the tense quiet. I don't think it cowardly or weak to fear Heero Yuy when he's like this, especially after you go through a war with him and see some of the things he's done to people.

The guy, simply put, was a killer. True, he'd been trained in computers, mechanics, and assorted other quirky skills and abilities; but they all served to support the main pillar of the structure that was a one-man army. And the main pillar of such men is the rubble, bones and shattered fragments of all that he's destroyed, glued together in blood and iron resolve. A killer--- correction, a killing machine. I imagined that there were relatively few that had angered Heero Yuy and not paid dearly for it.

Still complete quiet...

It was broken by a small, timid voice that was barely a whisper; "I'm sorry Heero."

Duo Maxwell was one of those few.

"Do you have any idea what this was?" Heero spoke calmly, grinding out each word with emphasis. In his right hand he was shaking the broken green wire that he'd been tugging at. Duo looked pathetic. Heero continued, "No, I didn't think you would."

I almost intervened here. It wasn't really Duo's fault, not entirely. If Heero would just learn to ignore Duo's pestering and constant chattering, many of these fiascoes would be avoided. Duo's talkativeness would push my buttons too, but I could (mostly) ignore him. Heero always seemed to fall into Duo's trap, engage him in conversation. I wondered if Heero knew this too. I could not tell if Heero had any idea what kind of effect Duo Maxwell had on him. 

"This," He threw the wire away. It made a soft sound on the wood floor and was heard from no more. "Was, and I repeat was because now its just trash, the connecting cord to the transmitter. Without it, we might as well sit here and wait to fucking die."

Duo's lips trembled; he backed away from Heero's looming fury. A few feeble words that might have been another apology came out, but I couldn't hear them. Duo's eyes stayed fixed, shocked into the vice-like gaze of the daunting Wing pilot. Wetting his lips, Duo tried again to speak:

"I'm really sorry," He had a stranger's voice, one belonging to a small boy, scared and distraught over the mess he had accidentally, good naturedly, made. There was the guilt of knowing he was at fault and the tremendous embarrassment of having failing someone very important. Maybe it wasn't such a stranger's voice to Duo… "I didn't know what you were working on was so important. I…"

"You never seem to know," Heero's voice lacked compassion. "You're always so sorry too. Maybe, if you pulled your head out of your ass it'd serve some use, ne? But you don't ever seem to learn. No. You just keep on in your old, happy-go-lucky ways. It's going to cost you one of these days."

"Heero…" Duo's face was hard to recognize with the smile gone, the sparkle missing from his eyes. He looked close to tears. Only Heero could affect him that much. He was the only one Duo cared enough about to let his putdowns and words mean a thing in his mind.

I could not tell if Heero had any idea what kind of effect he had on Duo Maxwell...

"Would you just go away?" The Japanese youth spat in disgust.

Duo began to speak again but swallowed his words halfway. He turned slowly and walked to the nearest exit, not looking back once. The door creaked as it shut.

"You should be resting," Heero was addressing me. His voice was cold, bitter; but it also sounded sick, and weary. "It's stupid for you to be moving around, hobbling against the wall. You're not going to get any better that way."

He'd taken a shot at my pride. It was my body, my decision, not his. If I felt I was strong enough to move around on my own I damn well could. "Hey, don't bite _my_ head off too. I'm not stupid. It's not up to you to tell me what to do." I rebuked in defense.

The Japanese youth didn't answer, running a hand through his messy brown hair and letting out an audible sigh instead. It almost looked as if a part of his bitterness was blown out too. The tense features in his body relaxed and now Heero simply looked tired.

"If we have to move soon I'd prefer you'd be as healthy as possible," Heero spoke in a flat, monotone manner, as if he'd flipped back into autopilot for the time being. "I don't want anything holding us down if we need to move."

"What makes you think we'll be able to move so soon?" I didn't hear it, but I spoke with more than doubt and pessimism in my voice. I didn't hear it, but I could feel it in my mood, in how I formed the words. "We don't even know where the hell we are. Nobody knows where the hell we are. Nobody even knows if we're alive or not."

"Just in case though," Heero said, turning away from me and walking across the room. He stopped and knelt down at the green wire, picking it up and examining it critically. "If an opportunity arises, I want us to be able to take it."

Heero walked back to where I was holding myself up against the wall. He threw the wire down with the giant, box shaped transmitter and the scattered tools. The wind outside howled fiercely and the wooden walls creaked in the house. Heero turned towards the nearest doorway; the one Duo had exited through, as if almost expecting to see someone enter. Nobody came.

-end "Refuge", part 2 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

Comments to: 


	4. 3 Setting

Souls Disappear in the Snow-

by masamune reforged '06

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing and I wish Sunrise, the rightful owners, would stop trying to sell it to me. I don't have that kind of cash.

Warnings: yaoi 1x2 (eventually) 3x4, angst, bad language, supernatural, death?

Archive: If anyone would like to archive this, or any of my other fics, feel free to go right ahead!

Recap: After crash-landing in a tundra and stumbling upon a refuge, the pilots are eager to return to the battle against OZ. Heero manages to get the electricity in the house running, but when Duo distracts him while he's repairing a radio transmitter, he makes a mistake. Furious at Duo, Heero puts him down and shouts him out of the room, the transmitter useless.

Part 3- Setting

The house, everything that happened was because of that house. And even though, ironically enough, it saved our lives, I hate the place to this very day. Just seeing a similar ceiling pattern or drapery or curtain makes me shiver inwardly. I don't like to think about that place very much.

To start, it wasn't even a house. The place was a mansion, at the least, and that is phrasing it modestly. After getting used to hobbling around, supporting myself on the walls, I wandered around the place. I was driven by a curiosity that was unknown to me. Normally, I would have simply ignored the empty halls, stale rooms and dusty closets. There was something in me though, and it wouldn't let me stay still. At first I just brushed it off as my compensating for the day I'd lay like a blob in bed, a way of showing that I was still full of life and activity. I was trying to prove to myself that I was still alive. After awhile though, especially after Quatre commented on my running all over the estate, I saw that there was something more, something drawing me to peek into every unlocked room and absorb everything about the place into my brain. In retrospect I was like a bird fluttering all around his cage, pecking at every inch of the structure that both protected me from the harsh, deadly world and imprisoned me.

The mansion was ancient, but miraculously not in great disrepair. However, it was obvious that the place hadn't been used in many years. The thick layer of dust told me that. Also, compared to the few items and supplies that seemed most near to our era, there were hosts of things from a much older time. Antique clothes and belongings stuffed in boxes, forgotten mementos arranged perfectly in rooms and on shelves, as if the occupant was still on vacation. Almost everything left was either too old to use, too worthless to sell or broken.

- - - - -

"This place is creepy," Duo said, cereal falling back into his bowl as he spoke.

The night (the third since I'd regained consciousness and the eight since our arrival) had been a long and sleepless one. The perpetual wind outside seemed to howl louder every time I'd almost forced myself to sleep, jolting me awake. From the dark rings under the eyes of the other Gundam pilots I could tell it had been an equally restless night. Heero looked the worst of all of us, and I doubted if he had slept at all.

"I mean, it's all made up like some ancient manor or castle," Duo went on, disregarding the fallen bran flakes and scooping more into his mouth, the heaps of sugar still clearly visible on top. "It's almost like it's been frozen in time here. Plus, the architecture is sorta goth with all the long shadows and winding stairs. It's gotta be super old but it-"

Duo stopped. No one was listening to him. Everyone's minds seemed to be elsewhere. The more directed of us were sensibly trying to come up with a plan to get out of this cage. Sighing softly, Duo turned his attention back to breakfast, which was from a giant store of old, nasty cereal. Trowa had discovered the pantry in the wee hours of the morning while rummaging in the manor's endless basement. I'd never been so happy to see Uncle Ben's Bran Cereal in my life.

Trowa was the first to finish eating. Pushing back his chair he stood up and announced, "I'm going to go back into the basement. I'll see if I can get us heat."

"Hey! That'd be great! Think you can get the cable TV working too while you're down there? I seriously miss my shows and if I miss the next session of Cowboy Bebop I-"

Heero shot Duo a look from the 'omae o korosu' stockpile. The chestnut braided youth stopped short, meeping the rest of whatever he had to say. Quatre smiled a little bit, the first positive emotion out of the normally cheerful blond all morning.

"Trowa, while you're down there can you see if there's any dried meat or something I can make for dinner tonight?" Quatre asked sweetly, almost cooing at his uni-banged lover. I rolled my eyes. Sometimes they were way to 'lovey-dovey' for my liking. It was also a danger to the mission, being that close to someone who you might need to sacrifice one day...

Turning to face him, Trowa's face gave off no emotion. "It's very hard to wear parkas and gloves all over the place," He said sternly. "Getting the heat working will make life here much easier. I think you can do the shopping on your own." And with that, the lanky youth walked away. I hadn't been expecting that kind of reaction from the normally bland Heavyarms pilot. It sorta made me smile.

"What do you think of this place Fei-man?" Duo asked after a minute's respite of silence. Quatre seemed slightly jilted by Trowa's words. "I heard you bumping around bright and early this morning. You sure cover a lot of ground with that leg of yours."

I didn't answer; hoping that if I ignored Duo's query he'd let it slide and move on to a different topic. I personally felt weird about scouring the establishment. It wasn't normal behavior. But Duo wouldn't stop bugging me and I finally caved in.

"I didn't get to anything on the third floor or in the basement. There's not much of interest really," I tried to sound casual, hoping I'd kill his curiosity.

"Yeah yeah, but what'd you _think_ of the place?" Duo persisted, leaning forward as if I'd be able to offer some golden tangent of knowledge in answer to his question.

I thought about it for a quick second and decided Duo probably wouldn't let go of this until I gave him an honest answer. Pushing my Uncle Ben's aside, I stared up at the ceiling. "It's gigantic. The rooms are enormous and I couldn't even count how many locked doors I found. Some rooms are empty. Most only have one or two things in them. Dust everywhere. The bizarre thing is there are rooms that appear 100 intact."

I thought about it for a moment, my mind flickering back to all the rooms I'd looked on during the dim light of the morning hours. The perfect bedspreads, the trinkets and toys set neatly and orderly, waiting to be played with and enjoyed again. The elegant rooms screaming decadence and riches. The faded nature of all the rooms added to the feeling that their extravagance was only a crumbling façade to those that had lived here. Somehow the bedrooms and studies looked like exhibits in a museum. They lacked life and were devoid of error. Everything was too perfect, too neat and orderly, like whoever had owned it had been a slave to the room, obsessing over it continually.

"Definitely the strangest thing is the way people seem to have lived in it in many different time periods." I went on, "Someone, at some time, comes to live here after a long absence, but never cleans out any of the old stuff. Obviously some of the nicer stuff has probably been stolen..." I waited, realizing I'd missed saying the one thing I found most disturbing out of them all. Duo said it for me:

"The people that come here never leave with all their belongings." He whispered in a tone that borrowed from a campfire ghost story. Heero rolled his eyes and got up to put his dishes in the sink, which was coated all the way around in rust. Duo called after him, "Awww, Hee-chan, I didn't mean to scare you. Come on back."

Again. Duo was intentionally baiting Heero, trolling for a reaction. I was amazed that Duo had bounced back into his normal rhythm, especially after the incident the previous night. Typically, I could expect Duo to sulk and avoid Heero for at least a day or more. But Duo seemed to be acting differently towards Heero than he normally would. The Deathscythe pilot seemed to want to make the point that he didn't care if Heero got angry. Duo was going to be the prankster he was, and Heero would just have to live with it.

As always, the Wing pilot turned around to say something to Duo, and that was when his pants got caught on a knob jutting out from the wall. Heero stumbled a little, jeans ripped, a fork fell to the floor and suddenly a small compartment opened up right where Heero had passed. Cursing, his plate banging and chipping on the kitchen counter, Heero shot a murderous glance at Duo, causing the blood to drain from the braided boy's face. I tried to eat and laugh at the same time and was rewarded by choking on Bran Flakes. I couldn't place why, but I got a kick out of seeing Heero perturbed like this.

"What are those?" Quatre asked.

Anger had vanished from Heero's face, leaving only a combination of surprise, curiosity and concentration. His plate was forgotten, lying on the grimy counter, and his interest was totally absorbed in a long, brown and white pistol that he turned over and over in his palm. His fingers rubbed along the smooth barrel, and he fingered the trigger gently. I wondered how Heero had managed to pull it out of thin air. For a moment, I imagined the situation escalating further, Heero acting on his rage and-

"Holy shit," Duo exhaled, pushing his chair back and walking over to where Heero stood. I looked up over the lip of the table and my eyes popped open. "How many are there?" Duo whispered, but the sound carried in the silent kitchen, accompanied only by a metallic clank, as he picked up a double- barreled shotgun.

Heero threw his gun back on the floor, where a heap of various guns were strewn haphazardly. Dozens of pistols, automatic weapons and rifles had clattered to the floor from the now uncovered dark space that Heero went to inspect. He rummaged around inside, and I heard a large amount of clanging and metal grinding noises.

"Loaded," Duo observed, checking the ammo on the shotgun he still held. Heero pulled out an Uzi type along with a few taped up boxes and put them down on the table. "Why would anyone store all those weapons here? In this huge castle they could put them anywhere. Why the kitchen?"

"They weren't just storing them," Heero said, flipping open one of the boxes, revealing countless ammo clips and single loading shotgun shells. "Stacked up this way, they would be easy to grab and reload. It's like-"

"An arsenal," Quatre finished the sentence, eyeing the collection grimly. "Like someone was ready to wage a full-blown war. And this room," He paused, looking around the kitchen. "Just one doorway, thick metallic island in the center to take cover behind… Perfect for making a defensive stand… except there's no place to retreat to…"

I walked over to the now-revealed stockpile, sticking my head in the dark space and looking around. It stretched far above me. Pulling my head out I said, "This thing is a dumbwaiter, kind of an elevator for small items. The kitchen staff probably used it to transport food to the higher levels of the mansion."

"I don't get why anyone would put guns in there though," Duo shook his head, and started to pick up an armful of guns, cramming them back into the dumbwaiter space. "I couldn't even tell that foolwaiter thingy was there."

"Dumbwaiter," I corrected him, and then pondered the subject for a bit. "Whomever got all these guns together definitely didn't want others knowing about it, that's why they chose this almost unnoticeable spot to hide them in. It can also move them to any level of the house."

"Nobody needs that kind of firepower," Heero flipped the ammo boxes shut and stored them back in the dumbwaiter space. "They would have to be fighting an full scale war to justify all that."

"It does seem pretty cowardly," I admitted, speculating that it had been part of some treachery planned by henchmen that had never gone through with it. "But cowards are put to ease by having lots of weapons." I smiled at Duo, who was still playing with the gun that Heero had originally picked up. I stretched out my hand to take it from him and place it away.

"Maybe they needed to fight something that powerful," Duo let out his words in such a low hush that I only barely caught them.

Heero was leaving, and I turned around to ask him what he thought about it all. Apparently my injured leg did not appreciate this sudden movement. I suddenly felt white-hot pain burning around my knee. The kitchen raised itself up around me as I slid towards the ground. "Wufei!" Duo cried out, moving forward to catch me.

Slamming both my hands on the counter top, I bit my lip until I thought it would bleed and tried to keep myself up. Duo wrapped both his arms around my waist, trying to hold me up. Duo still held me up, and I was only vaguely aware that he was talking to me, asking if I was all right.

I looked into Duo's eyes. He was very close, less than inches from my face. The American joker had a very young, almost effeminate face, accented by his long hair. But his eyes, those amethyst depths that were the only real window onto his true persona; they captivated me, calling out to me. I felt myself leaning forward.

"Oi!" Quatre shook my right shoulder roughly. "Are you all right Wufei?"

My legs began to regain their strength, clarity broke through, unabated by the fading pain. As the pain subsided I felt burning anger rushing up into me, causing my cheeks to flush. I was seething, embarrassed at being so weak. I couldn't even keep my feet! Anger clouding everything else, I roughly shoved Duo and Quatre away from me. Limping heavily on my bad leg, I stalked out of the room without another word. The brown and white pistol was totally forgotten.

- - - - -

It only took a few minutes of wandering around the mansion before I became bored and my pride healed over. I began to look around the house for the others. I found Heero in the great hall, throwing a bunch of heavy looking logs into the fireplace. A blanket and a tiny blue pillow lay on the bear skin rug that was closest to the roaring fireplace. Sweet smelling smoke filled the air, as the beginning of a fire crackled and burned the smaller wooden logs that Heero had fed it.

The great hall seemed to be the heart of the mansion, situated perfectly in the middle. Its ceiling was well over forty feet above our heads and several, now rusted, chandeliers hung lifelessly in the gloom. Little electric light bulbs sat in ornate lanterns about seven feet above the floor, symmetrical on every side. At one end, every last light was burnt out, but it was only one remote corner of the room. There was a magnitude of books and books shelves in this room, along with several chairs and some rickety hickory tables. Some chairs were plush leather, others plain wood-backed hickory. Many of the bookshelves had been toppled over and chopped into firewood, the only source of heat in the gigantic room.

Heero noticed me limping in, and took just the briefest second to acknowledge my presence with a slight nod of his head. I nodded back and began to pace around, looking up at the vaulted ceilings absentmindedly. Heero and I never had enjoyed a very talkative relationship, and the silence between us wasn't out of place at all. But I felt an urge, a rising desire to speak to him, and try as I might, I couldn't place why. Maybe I was just bored? I turned around to face him, but he kept his back to me, motionless, staring into the flames that continued to roar as they consumed the wood.

"So,um, how're you doing?" I felt like kicking myself immediately after the words left my mouth. Me bugging Heero for no reason and sounding like an idiot?. I was picking up a few too many of Duo's ways. But, since Heero had turned to me, and simply met my question with a blank face, I felt the need to ask a sort of follow up question.

"Do you think we'll ever get out of here?" I certainly wasn't doing well as far as conversation skills stood.

"What kind of stupid question is that?" Heero coldly answered, turning away again. "I want to leave as soon as it's possible. The war won't wait for us. OZ is probably running all over the Colonies as we speak."

"Yeah," I conceded, but pressed on, "But do you have any idea when that might be? The weather is treacherous; I don't think we could travel more than a few miles out there. Snow has already covered up all the exits on the first floor."

"How do you know that?" Heero turned around, asking the question with a razor-like bite in both his voice and eyes. I told him that I had tried the doors earlier this morning, to which he scoffed, "You have a bizarre thing for this old place. I wonder if… well, anyway, you've been acting weird lately. I wonder if you shouldn't be in bed recovering still."

"I'm fine," I growled out, quickly growing tired of the conversation and sorry that I had started it. "You don't look so well yourself. Maybe you're the one that needs to lie down for a while."

There was a menace in my voice and Heero noticed it too. He made as if to curse me in Japanese, then suddenly changed and admitted with a sigh, "Hai. I didn't sleep very well last night."

Indeed, he had bags under his eyes and his hair was sticking out at odd angles, more so than usual, from a night of tossing and turning. A sort of softness came over him; I seemed to spot it only when he was in front of the roaring fire, bending my vision with its heat. He seemed hunched over, his arms not as muscular as I had always thought them to be. A dusty, lackluster covered his blank face and gave off a strange aura of frailty. In the heat bent silhouette, he seemed almost like a small child and an old, fading man at the same time.

He turned to cokes the fire, the prongs of the iron poker sending sparks up into the air. I smiled at his back and asked, "Why do you always treat Maxwell so badly?"

I have no clue where the question came from, or why I didn't check myself before asking it. A light sweat broke out over my brow as Heero faced me again, the poker still in his hand. He was looking at me, irritated, eyes scrutinizing me like he would a suspicious stranger. His arm tensed and he swung the poker back, hitting a blazing log and forcing it to roll off the neat, perfect pile he had set up. I swallowed, and started to apologize, to tell him that it was really none of my business, when the look came into his face.

Preceded by an angry snarl, the only benign aspect was a kind of tranquility that slackened the jawbones, accented by dark blue eyes that fell to the floor. Heero bit the very front part of his upper lip, a thing I'd only seen Duo do, and the color faded from his face. It appeared for only an instant on Heero's face, before he recovered with a shake of his head, but I'd never forget it. A total look of sadness, guilt and self-loathing. Manifested in it were impossible dreams and desires, hopelessness and back-stabbing passion.

"What did you say?" Heero asked, forcing me out of my shock as I scrambled for words. The pathetic façade was gone, replaced by the ultimate stoic mask. But I could still feel it there, feel it radiating from him, sliding out right through the mask.

"I asked why you always treat Maxwell like shit," I'd thrown away my chance to back out of the question. I decided that if I was this far in, I might as well go deeper. "Do you really think he deserves, needs, all the crap that you give him? What if..."

"How the hell do you know what Duo fucking wants?" Heero suddenly snarled, flinging the poker aside. It clattered heavily on the floor. The fire was swelling up now, devouring the fuel from the logs that Heero had set there.

Heero's eyes burned with anger; but it was more directed at himself than at me. "You're never very nice to him either." Reflected in his words towards me were his words to himself, magnified a million fold. Anger caused the Wing pilot to stutter as he took a step towards me. "Y,You never show him respect. You don't seem to give a damn about him. You treat him like a little kid."

Heero's words weren't having their desired effect on me at all. Everything he said had little impact because I felt, I knew, that he was projecting onto me. But I still had to respond, "It does us no good, you two fighting all the time. We should be trying to get out of here, not squabbling over petty crap."

"Hypocrite," Heero spat. I sensed both of us looking for a way to end the awkward situation. Roaring fire and tempers had made it stiflingly hot in the large room. "You never help him."

"Maybe," I said. "But he-" I made myself choke back the words that I really wanted to hurl at him, the ones that would break his back on this matter. They were only true after all; it wouldn't be a lie to say them... No! There was no way I was going to say that. It wasn't like me to take cheap shots. And it would have hurt Duo more than anyone else. I still didn't know enough about Heero's feelings. However, the fact of the matter was that Heero was the one tormenting Duo.

I didn't give Heero a chance to say anything else. I walked out of the room, down poorly lit corridors and past the now empty kitchen. The windows were entirely frosted over with white, and the wind whirled incessantly. I muttered to myself, to Heero who would never hear me, "Duo only cares about how you treat him, about what you think of him."

- - - - -

The basement was better described as a labyrinth. Littered with pitch-black passages and padlocked doors, almost all of it was unknown. Besides the pantry, only three rooms had electricity, and that included the room where the generator sat. It was an ancient relic from ages past, a huge, silver contraption that never ceased to whir, like the wind outside. Its deep hum could be heard in most of the mansion, and when you went into the basement, it vibrated and shook through you like a tremor.

I walked past the pantry, past a few doors and stopped. Over the roar of the generator, I thought I could hear voices. By the next door, the light from the pantry was too far off to give any real light. The doorframe was barely visible, but the inside was lit up by candles, scattered on the floor and casting random shadows around the room. In the very middle of the room I could make out Quatre and Trowa. Trowa was on his hands and knees, fiddling with what had to be the central heating system. Quatre stood over him and, as I entered, I was able to make out his words:

"…why don't you take a break? You've been working at this for a long time," Quatre's voice was whiny, strained by irritation and worry. I got the feeling that something was wrong. I took another step towards them, stepping gingerly on my injured leg.

"I'm fine," Was all that Trowa responded with. He spoke like one far away, absorbed in his task.

"Are you sure I can't do anything to help?" Quatre asked, fretting and wringing his hands.

I had seen a scene like this only yesterday, but employing different dialog...

"I said I'm fine," Trowa answered again in a bland voice. I took another step and passed into the light from one of the candles, throwing a shadow over the two.

"Ahhh!" Quatre yelled, turning around suddenly. A metal clank accompanied it. Pale, alert and scared, Quatre's lips clamped down the moment he saw me. Trowa's long legs were kicking on the concrete floor as he turned around to see what was going on. I nearly tripped over a burning candle.

"WHAT! What is it?" Trowa yelled, half covered by Quatre's scream, which seemed to linger in the air even after the blond had shut his mouth. Trowa scrambled up, a wild, almost to the point of animalistic, face searched the room, brushing over me, searching still, and finally falling on me again. Trowa's chest was heaving, like he'd just run for his life. His eyes narrowed, and a brilliant snarl came over his features as he glared at me.

"Jesus Wufei!" His glare broke away from me sporadically to look at Quatre, who was breathing heavy and holding his chest. "What the hell did you have to scare him like that for?" Trowa ran a hand through his hair, which was falling over both eyes. I wondered how long it had been since he'd gelled it.

I didn't really know what to say. "Sorry," I started, wondering why such a stupid event felt like such a big deal. "I didn't know." I kept looking at Quatre, who stared out into empty space, his blue eyes quaking. "I thought you knew I was here. I didn't mean to startle-"

"Startle?" Quatre shouted, causing me to almost reel backwards in surprise. A bizarre tint had come into his eyes, and he was looking daggers at me with it. "You scared the shit out of me!" He waved an arm in a furious gesture. Trowa began to try to calm the exasperated Arab down. "What the hell were you doing sneaking around anyway?" I was disturbed by Quatre's use of profanities. I must have frightened him worse than I could have imagined.

Everyone stood speechless for a moment. Quatre kept his stare locked on me. I nonchalantly met his eyes, and after a few tense moments, he shuddered and looked away, blood draining from his face. He shook his head and put his palms to his temples. The normally timid youth seemed to be shocked at himself. I know I was. I had never seen that kind of reaction out of Quatre.

"I'm really sorry," I repeated, because it was the only thing to say. "I came down to see if you needed any help. You were talking and I didn't want to interrupt. I sincerely didn't mean to scare you."

Trowa walked over and put an arm on Quatre's. Rubbing it gently, Trowa looked into his lover's face and quietly spoke, "It's alright." Quatre gave a small smile in return, but his face was still pale. Trowa's hand followed the bones of Quatre's arm until it found the small hand, which it gave a reassuring squeeze.

"I'm sorry too," Quatre said, looking at Trowa and not me. "I shouldn't have overreacted like that."

Feeling very out of place, I felt like slinking away, but was unsure of where I would go. Instead I casually asked, "So, is there anything I can do?"

The reminder brought an agitated look from Trowa towards the sulking furnace. He pulled his hand from Quatre, who let it go reluctantly, and walked towards it, stepping around the candles on the floor. He sighed when he got to it. To me it sounded as if he were about to give up.

"I thought I had it going," He began, his back to Quatre and I. "Thought I almost had it going. Then I lost my concentration when you came in."

"Ch! I already apologized once," I defended, wrapping my arms around myself as I shivered.

"I know," Trowa didn't mean to offend anyone. "Quatre's scream was what really got me."

"I'm really sorry," Quatre meekly shuffled, still sounding shocked. I thought he may have whispered under his breath, "I really felt something," in addition, but Trowa simply turned to him and said:

"Let's just forget about it," But it didn't appear to comfort Quatre much. Trowa got back down on the dirty floor and began to go back to work. The damp cold of the room was getting to me.

"Why doesn't Wufei help you?" Quatre asked, much to my chagrin. I wasn't exactly in the mood to stay down here for long. But on the other hand, I had been sloth-like lately. "Or I could-"

"Quatre," Trowa's voice was a soft, but measured, sign of irritation. "I already told you that I can do this." They were right back to the point they had been at when I'd entered.

"But Trowa-"

"Seriously," Bending down to pick up the wrench, Trowa interjected, "It's not more than a one man job. I'll be able to get it running myself."

Quatre shuffled his feet and made to ask again, "Are you sure I can't help at all?"

I felt the frustration growing in Trowa. How do you tell a loved one you just want him to go the hell away? "Don't worry. I-"

"Are you saying I would just get in the way?"

Quatre's question hung in the air. Sad aquamarine peered at the ground. I looked at Trowa, knowing exactly what he was feeling, but having no idea what he would say. Silence settled for a short while longer than it should have. I wanted Trowa to tell Quatre how childish and abrasive he was acting. The rich blond sometimes could act spoiled and immature... Still, I highly doubted that would ever happen.

"It might be easier if you did go upstairs," Trowa said. As if to make up for the hurt feelings, Trowa added the excuse, "I don't think anyone's washed the dishes yet."

Quatre showed only a small bit of surprise, hiding the rest behind a false smile. Across the room, Trowa's mouth was slightly open but in a guilty, unsure grimace. He knew that what he had said would get him what he wanted, and even though it may hurt Quatre, a part of him acknowledged and appreciated the chance. That part would probably hold him over, keep him from saying, or doing anything to keep Quatre in the basement, until the blond was upstairs. Guilt would wash over him eventually, but he would get what he had wanted. I tried to smile reassuringly at Trowa.

"I'll be upstairs, ok?" Quatre asked.

A quiet second passed before Trowa found any words. "Sure," He breathed. I smiled at him.

Quatre walked out of the room, his face falling as soon as Trowa could not see it.

After Quatre had trudged up the steps, Trowa looked up at me and requested, "I'd like to do it on my own."

- - - - - 

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to follow after Quatre.

The kitchen door was ajar and I walked in soundlessly. Quatre was scrubbing the life out of one of the pots, nimble fingers chalk white in tense concentration and soapsuds. Without turning around, Quatre asked, "Yes?"

I stopped. I thought the running water and clanging of the dishes would have easily covered my approach. I still was not sure of how or what I wanted to talk to Quatre about. It was as if he already knew that I had something to ask him. I had hoped for a couple more seconds to formulate my question.

"You came to ask me something, right?" Brief and vexed, Quatre was unusually rough in his speech.

"Umm…" I stalled. "Did you need want any help with those dishes?"

Quatre stopped, looking over his shoulder at me. He had his eyebrows scrunched together in effort, His jaw clenched, he almost appeared angry until I noticed it looked as if he were hiding exasperation and sadness. "…Sure." In truth, he probably wanted the company.

I rolled up my sleeves as Quatre made room over the sink for me. I dipped my hands through the foam towards the nearest plate. Like electric shock, a burning sensation assaulted my fingertips for less than a blink of an eye as my reflexes kicked in. With a hiss I pulled my hands out of the water to nurse them in the folds of my coat.

"It's fucking scalding Quatre!" I said. His hands were entirely submerged.

"Who knows what this flatware has been through in the past?" Quatre asked. "Or when it was last cleaned? The heat will kill the germs."

"Or give you a third degree burn," I muttered to myself. I twisted the knob over the pipe labeled 'C'. Steam went up as the ice cold water mixed with the unbearably hot. After a minute, I turned the knob off. "I thought the heat wasn't working?"

"The electricity and the hot water run on the generator, but the heating system is some kind of gas one," Quatre explained as he rubbed a fork vigorously. His fingers and hands were red from the scalding water.

-end "Setting" Part 3 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

Feedback (please?) to 


	5. 4new chapter! Expedition

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and...), angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death?  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to The five Gundam pilots take refuge in a massive, abandoned mansion deep in the Artic, temporarily trapped. Having nothing to take their pent up emotions out on, the pilots' relationships begin to fray, especially between those with strong feelings for another.

Note: Yes, this is an entirely new chapter! I felt that I jumped too fast between chapter 3 and the old chapter 4, and I didn't think it made sense for the G-boys to NOT make an attempt to leave.

Note: None of these sites/MLs seem to be able to apply proper SPACING in documents, resulting in a format that I cannot seem to correct being seen. I highly recommend you DL this chapter and read it that way, as I cannot get the emphasis across without the proper spacing:

obviously change - to . www-megaupload-com?dWS4CRCIY

Part 4-Expedition

Upon waking the next morning it was evident that Trowa had failed in restoring heat to the ancient mansion. Looking at the exposed pipes snaking down one side of my room as I dressed, I couldn't help but wonder when they had been last used. Who had set up the heating system anyway? As I threw on a partially stained jacket over the two sweaters I had slept in, I fancied that the orange-red blotches down the right arm were the rust and grit that the engineer who had installed the pipes had gotten when laboring on the mammoth network.

My thoughts were distracted by shouting coming from downstairs.

I had to take my time going down to the foyer, the source of the commotion. I felt new vigor in my wounded leg, but it still refused to hold my body's weight on its own. I found everyone in the foyer, a poorly lit room connected to the great hall by a long hallway, probably to keep out the cold air.

"You're being unreasonable!" Quatre was saying, already appearing exasperated and vexed. "We've never dealt with such harsh climate conditions before. We can't just rush out and-"

"And get back to what we're supposed to be doing!" Duo seemed to be the main instigator of strife. He was bundled up, head to toe, in a huge black parka, a black ski mask, black boots and black gloves. "Quatre, I know you want to be cautious, but we're just going to waste away here at this rate! Trowa and I will be back before nightfall, probably with a truck or snow mobile or whatever we can find at the closest town."

Heero and Trowa stood mute on the sidelines of the conversation. Trowa was bundled up as well.

"You're not seriously going out there?" I broke into the conversation. Four sets of eyes turned on me, one amethyst pair menacingly. "You have no idea where to go, no idea where we even are. You think there are towns in this forlorn wasteland?"

Duo wanted to say something vicious, or bite my head off. Trowa, however, stepped in between and said, "It's true that we don't know our current position. But that's all the more reason to go out on a reconnaissance mission. We don't have time to waste here. The sooner we can get up into space, the better."

"Trowa, please, listen to me for a minute," Quatre pleaded, causing his tall lover to look at him with slight irritation. Quatre could be a whiner, probably something to do with being the only son of a multi-billionaire. "We can't be hasty. I've seen the desert; I know how unforgiving the elements can be, especially to those who are poorly prepared and have never-"

"I've already told you twice," Trowa interrupted. "We've got plenty of supplies to last one, even two nights. The sleeping bags are made for below zero temperatures. There are always risks involved-"

"Well I don't want _you_ taking them!" Quatre was desperate, fretting insanely.

I walked over to Heero, who seemed to just be sitting back and watching the entire thing unfold. So none of the others could hear me, I whispered, "Are you just going to let them go like that? They have no idea what they're up against."

"It's their decision," Heero answered. "Whatever they do I'll just have to support them the best I can."

"Wh-," I stopped, feeling a burning stare upon me all of a sudden. I lowered my voice, "What are you saying? It's suicide! They have no clue what they're up against. You just can't let them go."

Heero turned to me and replied, in a determined, level tone, "That's why if they go, I'm going with them." He looked over my shoulder. I turned to see Duo.

I shook my head. Unbelievable… Duo, who had been watching our conversation, seemed to smile behind the dark ski mask. I guessed he had coaxed Heero into staying neutral in the argument.

"In that case I'm going with you too!" Quatre and Trowa's little tiff seemed to finally be at an end. Suddenly all eyes were on me. The decision had been made. I pondered how I was supposed to traverse the Arctic with my leg all busted up. I made up my mind.

"I'll go too."

- - - - -

Ten minutes later we were all ready to depart. I had persuaded Heero to leave the house's power on, just in case we needed to return. I was beginning to sweat, standing in the foyer, swaddled in four or five heavy layers. Quatre was even worse, perspiration already matting his forehead. The blonde had a white parka over maybe ten or eleven layers, bulging out ridiculously. He looked like a marshmallow.

"Everybody ready?" Quatre asked. I nodded.

"In that case," Duo was positively bouncing off the walls, rearing to go like a racehorse at the starting gate. He careened over to the door. "GERONIMO!" The American shouted as he pushed the door open.

But the door did not open. The knob turned, but the wooden frame did not budge an inch.

"What the fuck!" Duo spat angrily. He began to rattle the doorknob savagely, throwing all his weight into the immovable obstacle. "WHAT THE FUCK?" Again, Duo smashed into the door, causing it to give a deep groan. I heard a snapping noise, followed by another, softer sound.

"Stop!" I told Duo. He looked at me with a frustrated wrath. "We're snowed in. The door's probably blocked up from the outside. Breaking it down will just let more cold air in."

"The second floor," Trowa piped up, words slightly garbled behind a ski mask.

One of the unlocked bedrooms on the second story had a large hinge window. The instant it was open, Duo jumped, not even bothering to check how far down it was. He landed with a thud and a laugh in a huge pile of snow almost up to his waist. The rest of us waited for a moment. I wondered if my leg could take the fall.

Heero jumped, landing gracefully.

"What are those?" Quatre suddenly asked, pointing with a gloved finger. There seemed to be several places, slight bumps a stone's throw away from the mansion, where the snow almost seemed to make small mountains. Two of the mountains actually had a rocky peak.

"Graves," Trowa answered. He calmly jumped down.

Quatre stayed framed in the window for a moment, staring uneasily at the mounds. There were at least four dozen. A stiff wind whipped and stung his cheeks, making him shiver. The cold shock seemed to have snapped him from his thoughts, and he gingerly jumped into the thick white.

How did I get down without re-breaking my wounded leg? Belly flop. Don't dare laugh.

- - - - -

The first hour of the expedition was actually quite pleasant. Trekking through the waist high snow made our progress slow, but provided a good rehabilitation exercise for my leg. I could actually feel the strength building with every step I took, in between the gaps of tongue-biting pain. Duo took the lead, setting as fast a pace as one could muster in the impeding white drifts. Heero was directly in front of me. Several times I had to ask him to tell Duo to slow down. The Deathscythe pilot seemed deaf to my requests, and when he did cut the grueling pace, it was only for intervals of under a minute.

The sky was overcast, the sun blanketed by cloud cover. Without being able to locate the sun or moon, it was impossible to tell what direction we were heading in. The air was icy, nipping the throat with every breath. The only sign of life were a few deer pellets and hoof prints that we found after about half an hour of journeying. The tracks went off in the direction of a forest far away. Behind us, we could still see the dark outline of the mansion, watching us struggle away from it.

- - - - -

Minutes into the second hour, it began to snow. The flakes fell gently at first, one here, one there. It was actually quite nice. There was a sort of peaceful, simple allure to the landscape. Bundled up as we were, it wasn't too cold at all. I turned around once to see Trowa, unmasked, tilting his head back and trying to catch one in his mouth. Grinning to himself, Quatre grabbed a fistful of snow, compressed it together, and playfully zipped it at him.

Unfortunately, the Sandrock pilot's little joke caught Trowa dead in the nose. The blood flowed freely, staining the perfect white ground with crimson. Quatre hurriedly apologized, stopping Heero to get the medical kit. Trowa was quite angry at the blonde, not saying a word in response to his lover's apologies. He refused Quatre's help, swatting the well-intentioned Arab's hands away when he reached his side with a roll of gauze.

When Trowa had two pieces of gauze firmly stuck up his nostrils, Duo said, "Is everyone done playing around now?" I found that funny. Usually the braided Shinigami would be the one slowing us down with his antics. A howling wind answered with a heavier downfall of snow.

Quatre frowned at the sky. "It's getting dark already…" He said softly. We all somehow sensed what the timid blonde was about to say. Duo decided to cut to the quick.

"We're going on ahead!" He adamantly insisted, daring us to oppose him with a dubious violet glimmer in his eyes. "We left only a couple hours after sunrise. It's not getting dark."

Looking around, I had to disagree with Duo. A shadow had descended on the land. It was colder, the wind stiffer. Above the gray clouds began to roll by faster and faster, carried by the brisk gale.

"I think we should turn around," I spoke up. I wasn't about to let Duo bully me into this folly. "It does seem to be getting dark. I think there could be a storm coming. We haven't even made much progress. Even if we keep going, there's no guarantee we'll find anything."

"NO!" Duo shouted, smacking the snow in outrage. "No fucking way! You want to just rot away in that god-forsaken mansion? There's plenty hours of daylight left. We can't just give up. We have to get out of here! We have to get back to the war!" As he spoke, the wind seemed to shout him down, howling stronger than ever, mocking.

"We have plenty of gear," Trowa remarked, calmly pointing out the sleeping bags that were strapped to backpacks or slung over shoulders. "We may have to camp out a night in order to reach shelter. Personally, I think we should continue, but perhaps a vote is in order?"

"Keep going!" Duo yelled.

"…" Heero remained mum.

Quatre, "It's too dangerous to go ahead, especially with a potential storm looming."

"I agree with Quatre," I said, casting my lot. "We might not even be on the right track."

…

Heero didn't seem to want to vote. From my understanding of the Perfect Soldier it seemed bizarre that he hadn't been more active in leading the expedition. Now, at this crucial juncture, was he just going to stay quiet? I couldn't believe it. Duo had somehow manipulated the Wing pilot into a little puppet. It was undoubtedly the American's doing that Heero did not speak up.

After a minute of silence, Duo declared, "I'm going ahead! Those who want to head back, put your tail between your legs and get out of here!" He turned away and began to trudge off.

- - - - -

Forty minutes later, I was cursing myself for not doing exactly that.

"We need to turn back now!" Quatre was yelling from the rear, finally getting Duo to stop his onward march after minutes of futile pleas. "We won't be able to see at all in a little while, and the temperature's dropping rapidly." He blew on his already gloved hands in emphasis, jittering in place to keep the blood flowing. "It's not just the storm, it's actually already nightfall."

The blizzard was beginning to gain potentially lethal strength. The clouds were impossible to separate from the menacing graying sky, a slur of smudged brown, rolling black clouds and the faint tint of the sun setting behind it. The wind was coming in at an angle, whipping the flakes in our faces no matter what direction we faced. There was a persistent, hungry howl in the wind, a sniggering scorn that promised absolute contempt for our underestimating Mother Nature's fury.

Despite all this, Duo was stubbornly sticking to his path. The Deathscythe pilot had claimed numerous times that we would find shelter shortly, or that the weather might turn for the better. The worse the storm had gotten, the more Duo directed the subject of conversation to future plans concerning missions, the unknown status of our Gundams, and other petty talk. But now even the foolhardy American seemed to sense how unfortunate and unpopular his bullheadedness truly was.

"Perhaps we should set up camp for the night?" Trowa asked. "We can wait out the storm in the sleeping bags, then continue on or change direction-"

"Trowa I don't think that's such a good idea," Quatre gingerly tip-toed around the subject, not wanting to come in direct opposition with his lover. "It looks like it'll be pretty serious. I don't think we can take a gamble like that with equipment we've never tested."

I rolled my eyes at Quatre's timid argument. Both Duo and Trowa were being unreasonable, ignorance fueling their conviction. Polite recommendations were just killing time we already couldn't afford to lose, digging the grave deeper as the snow began to pile up. The trail we had blazed might be lost if we didn't turn back soon, and there was no guarantee that the direction we were heading in went anywhere at all.

Quatre was a natural mediator, but in times like this, his diplomatic gentility came off as weakness. I think Trowa felt the same, as he shook his head in staunch disagreement. For some reason, it seemed that the brunette was opposing Quatre just for the sake of the conflict.

"**Listen!**" I suddenly roared, unsure of how and from where the ardent fire in my voice had originated. "Do you all want to die? Are you out of your goddamn minds? We have **no fucking idea what we're doing out here!** The top priority to the mission right now is surviving so that we can find transportation to the colonies later! We can't fight if we're frozen solid to death!"

"You know what Wufei?" Duo asked, leering. "We'd definitely have found shelter if we weren't crawling around at a snail's pace because of YOU! You can go home! Noone's stopping you! You and Quatre are free to go," Here, a desperate, almost savage, glint flared in Duo's violet eyes, his jaw set in a ferocious snarl. I'd never seen the jovial prankster so powerful and full of wrath. "**BUT I'M GONNA KEEP GOING TIL I FUCKING FREEZE TO DEATH! I'M NOT GOING TO GIVE UP, NEVER!**"

"DUO!" There was only one person who could mediate this problem. Heero Yuy stepped in, softly putting a hand on Duo's shoulder. Heero's Prussian blue eyes were imbued with a rigid, but passionate aura, showing the rare emotion he always tried so hard to hide, fearing it was a weakness. Here, in this abysmal situation, it turned out to be the only power that could save us.

"Onegai Duo," Heero said, "Let's head back for today. We tried, you did your best. But we can't split up, not when we're going to need every single one of our skills and wits to find a way out of here. We just can't abandon each other. Getting back to the war is important, the mission is more important than any of our lives. However, if we die down here we'll fail it for sure."

Duo was moved by these words, although I was not. Still, I wondered if Heero's speech was enough to change the Deathscythe pilot's determination. I doubted it. Duo was more like a starved dog than a person now, chasing the scent of a rabbit onto a busy highway. He stood leaning into the northerly wind, letting the storm blast him with its full fury. He still seemed to glow in the creeping darkness.

"How about this?" Duo began, a slight frown creasing his ski mask. "How about we bunker down, all get in one or two sleeping bags together to prevent our body heat from dropping. When morning-"

"Not all of us may wake up in the morning!" Quatre yelled, worry overwhelming him. "At the rate of this snowfall, we could get buried in and be unable to dig out! I don't like this wind… The storm is only going to get worse! We need to head back!"

"No goddamned way..." Duo seethed, "No-"

Heero suddenly put his head right next to Duo's. It appeared that the Wing pilot was whispering in the American's ear, but I could not make out his words. I moved forward in order to listen, but a restraining arm on my shoulder stopped me. It was Quatre. I was about to tell the blonde that he really needed to stop acting like our mother, but Duo and Heero's conversation was already over.

Duo didn't say anything. He didn't even look at any of us. The wild braided orphan could be enigmatic and inapproachable when he wanted to. As Duo stalked past me, I got the distinct feeling that now was one of those times. Pleased that we were at least heading back to safety, I acquiesced, turning to follow.

- - - - -

We were going to die.

It had been something over two hours since we had turned back, but we had not been able to reach the shelter of the abandoned mansion. The trail leading back was relatively easy to follow, our tracks the only disturbance in the vast, untouched downy plain. Given the fact that we had already broken through the waist high floe in the other direction, the return trip should have been long over. The storm was relentless. A complete, thick darkness had descended, as the rightful inhabitant of the house returns after a day's work, casting the sun's intruding warmth far from our minds, numbing our toes and fingers.

The wind hollowed, whipping up a solid wall of resistance straight into our faces. By covering our faces, we were spared from the biting swarm, but rendered almost completely blind as a consequence. Not being able to see the route ahead, everyone stumbled and slipped, thrashing wastefully into the ever-rising snow banks around us. Quatre was doing the worst, falling almost every minute, stopping our progress each time he did so. Trowa did nothing to help. The former mercenary only huffed in irritation every time the Sandrock pilot buckled under, never offering a helping hand or a guiding arm.

Quatre fell. Trowa stopped; I knocked into him from behind. The stalwart uni-banged pilot just stood there looking at Quatre's fallen form, waiting for him to get up. After an uncomfortable moment, in which Quatre did not so much as twitch, Duo called out from the rear:

"What the fuck is taking so long!"

Not wanting to explain that Quatre had fallen for the umpteenth time, I merely turned back to the blonde. Something was not right. He was not even making an attempt to stand. I swallowed, the frigid air burning my throat. I was dying of thirst.

"Come on Quatre," Trowa barked, a lack of encouragement evident in his tone. No response. "Hey," Trowa's arms dropped to his side. I could only imagine the expression on his face. "Hey! Quatre?" Trowa asked, his words having no effect. "Quatre!"

"What's going on?" Heero asked, peeking over my shoulder. "Wh-"

"QUATRE? QUATRE!" A desperate, grave timbre shook Trowa's words. He dropped his flashlight, the sound of glass cleanly breaking accompanying the shudder and death of the light. In a single bound, Trowa was standing over his lover, the limber youth shaking. "QUATRE!" He yelled again. "Quatre?" Weaker now, more desperately. Trowa roughly grabbed Quatre by the back of his parka, flipping the smaller boy over onto his front.

"Get your hands off me!" The sudden answer seemed to even shout down the storm's ruckus, knifing into Trowa's chest with fury and hate. Quatre suddenly came to life, smacking Trowa's arms away with surprising strength. The Sandrock pilot got to his feet, his face almost entirely covered with flecks of glacial debris. Despite the snowy mess on his face, I thought I could see tears welling up in the corners of Quatre's aquamarine eyes. "Get away from me!"

Trowa's face went from an expression of surprise to relief to confusion. "What? Why?" He muttered stupidly. "Quatre what-"

"Is that all?" Quatre asked, his aim encrypted. "Is that all you'll do? Just stand there and yell? Just watch and scream at me!" Trowa's head fell, his tangle of hair covering his face. Quatre was getting red in the face, the combined effects of the freeze and distress twisting his normally angelic façade into an accusing mask of betrayal and broken feelings. "Is that how little you care about me?"

Trowa answered in a level, but sinister voice, "Quit playing your little games and get going." I was floored. This was not the response anyone would have expected.

Quatre seemed the least prepared for those words. Shaking his head, he disbelievingly asked, "What?" The blonde boy's rage had been blown out. He was muddled and perplexed, unable to believe what he had just heard. Trowa would never…

"Stop _fucking_ with me and holding us all up," Trowa spat. "We just lost two flashlights because of your selfish little stunt. If you could just put your trite insecurities and worries aside for a change, maybe you'd actually contribute something to the group."

A slight reprieve in the storm accented the awkward pause that followed.

Quatre was staring at the blanketed ground, unable to look his lover in the eyes. I felt Heero shifting his weight uncomfortably behind me. I also felt out of place, slightly embarrassed and sorry for Quatre; but I just couldn't tear myself away. There was nowhere to go anyway…

"My flashlight's dying," Heero announced from over my shoulder. We'd be in serious trouble without the mammoth flashlights that were guiding our fumbling retreat. I could only locate the others by their respective beams.

"You can't go through life just relying on others for support," Trowa said sternly. "I never want to have anyone constantly needing my attention like some small child or invalid. …So don't expect so much from me. That's just not fair." He bent over, picking up his busted flashlight. "Let's move out."

"Trowa…" Quatre began, the name crawling out of his mouth, a pitiful sob.

"Stop wasting time and get moving!" Trowa erupted, making Quatre jump in fright. He shouldered his way past Quatre, nearly knocking the smaller boy into the snow bank. Trowa kept walking ahead, not even turning back after stumbling and nearly falling without anything to light his path. That made me smile to myself.

I also brushed past Quatre, hurrying to catch up to Trowa so he could lead the way with my flashlight.

- - - - -

The brief reprieve in the storm was over. The swirling snowstorm bore down on us again in its colossal mercilessness. Up in the front, I realized how little one could see. We could walk right into the side of the mansion and bump our noses against its walls before seeing it.

After an indeterminable time period, someone behind me asked, "Any sign of shelter ahead?"

No answer, or at least nothing that could reach my ears over the screaming Arctic zephyr. A terrific gust hammered down, sending fragments of ice and snow whirling into my face. I could not feel the razor-like cut over my left eye, but became aware of it as the blood began to flow, dripping into my already blurred line of vision. I put a hand to my face, cursing myself for not grabbing a ski-mask earlier. I blinked and wiped away the blood.

And then I was suddenly alone.

I stopped moving immediately, some small sense of calm in my brain forcing me to stay put until the others could find me. I waited for Heero to bump into me from behind… ... I shivered inwardly as no such contact came, a fresh stream of blood stinging my eyes as I scanned around me as best I could. I couldn't find the others' lights. I cursed Trowa for losing his flashlight. I cursed myself for giving him my own.

"OI! HEY!" I tried shouting, but my voice sounded weak, strangled by the frigid gale. I was almost sure none of the others, wherever they were, would be able to hear me. Nonetheless, I had to try. "DUO! TROWA! HEERO! HELLO! HEY! DUO!"

I stopped, I could swear I heard voices somewhere. But they weren't the voices of any of the pilots.

These were different, but at the same time, familiar. I removed my hood in the hopes of recognizing the identity and direction of the speaker. No matter how hard I strained, the words were just a small bit beyond my range of hearing. I couldn't make out any distinct semblance to any of the voices, not to mention what they were saying. But I still felt like I had heard them before. As my frustration mounted, a bizarre notion came into my head. Rather than shout, I whispered, soft as humanly possible:

"Where are you?"

_Here_

Not satisfied with this unhelpful response I whispered again:

"Where is here?"

_Right here_

Apparently, I had to ask a different type of question:

"What is it like, where you are?"

_DarkCold_

"It's the same for me."

"I can't stand being in the dark."

_It's scary_

"Yeah… Sometimes…"

_Aren't you scared?_

This made me stop and wonder, not about the fact that I was having a conversation with an unknown person in the middle of a blizzard by whispering to them, but about the question the child, it sounded like a child, had asked me. Was I scared? Scared of the dark? Scared of the cold?

_You're 'fraid, aren't ya?_

"… … a little…"

_Me too. It's too dark here._

"Where are you?"

"Hello?"

_You 'fraid of being alone?_

I was about to vehemently object, about to curse the disembodied voice for not answering my question. I was lost out in a blizzard, without a flashlight, without any clue where to go! At this rate I was going to freeze to death if nobody came!

… Who would come? I wondered. Where were the others? If I had somehow strayed far from the path, would they risk their own lives trying to find me? Where were they?

I thought about all the times I had been alone. I had gotten used to being sent on solo missions, while the other pilots got paired up in twos. I thought about Merian, about her funeral and how lonely I had felt that day, the first time I had realized how precious of a blessing I had lost. All the nights of camping out in the wilderness, just me and Nataku… just me and myself…

God, I really was lonely…

_It's all right_

"You heard that?"

_ Don't worry, you don't need to be alone_

"How did you hear my thoughts!"

_Don't yell at me!_

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

"What did you mean, I don't need to be alone?

_Promise you won't yell at me anymore_

"Fine. I promise."

_Do you cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?_

"I promise."

_You need to say it_

"I cross my hear, hope to die,

stick a needle in my eye."

"Hello?"_Wanna play with me?_

…. …

"Sure"

But then, I really need to find the others... I can't waste my time here.

_Don't fib!You promised!_

"I never-"_I just wanted to be your friend_

"Wait!"_But now you'll just have to play by yourself!_

"NO! Wait!"_DON'T YELL AT ME!_

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!"_DON'T YELL AT ME!_

It was then I felt it. Initially, it felt like a slight breeze tickling my left eye, a small, barely noticeable pressure like the first touch of a tickling feather. But then the pressure did not give way. Slowly, but with stringent force, the pressure grew on my eyeball, causing me to tear up, panic rising in my chest. I tried to turn my face away from the intruding, invisible splinter, but the pressure was still perfectly aimed directly onto my cornea. I began to breathe in ragged gasps, fear overwhelming me as the nerves in my eye began to burst in agony, unbearable incendiary burning in my sockets. I pushed my hands to my face, a last measure to block the digging splinter.

I screamed in agony as the needle burst through, poking a sterile, tiny hole in my cornea. Clear, watery liquids began to flow out, streaming down my face, staining my hands. I nearly passed out in pain and shock.

_That's what you get for breaking the promise._

"Who are you?" I asked, my voice a quivering, frightened sniffle.

"It's me, Duo."

The answer came as a complete shock to me. I became dazedly aware of frosty wetness on my face, numbing my hands.

"What are you doing Wufei?" I was so confused. The voice was clearly Duo's... But it hadn't been his just a minute ago? Had it?

Looking up from the ground where I had curled up in a ball, I saw the Deathscythe pilot looking at me with a bizarre, questioning countenance. "Why did you suddenly wander off like that just as we came in sight of the house?"

This confused me even more. Staggering to my feet, I looked around with my good eye, my right hand still clapped firmly over my gouged one. I was still in excruciating pain, and vaguely realized I had wet my pants. I thanked the gods for all the layers I was wearing. Through the tears I could make out an open door and several windows lit up with morose, yellow light. I could not remember ever coming in sight of the cabin.

"What's wrong with you?" Duo asked again. "Why're you holding your head like that?"

"My eye… He poked out my eye…" I murmured. The mixture of my wound, broken spirit and confusion were too much. "He… I… It hurts…"

Duo rolled his eyes and grabbed my hand, pulling it away from my face. He let out a small breath, then scoffed, "Wufei, this isn't anything more than a little cut…"

"I can't see out of my left eye Duo!" I shouted in rage. And I couldn't.

What the hell had happened? How did I get back to the mansion? Couldn't Duo see the punctured gore? Still, he looked at me as if I were insane or playing some game.

"I'm telling the truth Maxwell!" I screamed. "I can't see a thing out of this goddamn eye!"

For emphasis, I covered my good eye and tried to walk around. In the complete blindness, I stumbled on my first step, my balance shot along with my sense of sanity. I felt someone grab me roughly before I could keel over entirely, hauling me up by my jacket to my feet. I opened my eyes, well, my one good eye, and found myself less than an inch away from Duo's face. The amethyst orbs scanned my own opal depths deeply, journeying deep into my core on an expedition. I did the same, concentrating on any shred of emotion or signal in the Deathscythe pilot's window onto his soul.

When it came down to it, Duo was a very simple, genuinely kind person. He was the first comrade in a long time that I liked and appreciated for something more than his skills. At first, it seemed strange, to think that this random guy would lay down his life to save my own, or any of the others. But he acted as if it were normal, so I just came to accept it, and gradually, began to feel the same for him. Despite his numerous pranks and jovial commentary, he took the war as seriously as any of us. Somehow, I knew he had a stronger connection to the cause than my own, something old and vital to his survival, the cogs that kept him going from day to miserable day of hiding, sneaking and killing.

"Come inside," Duo said, adding with reassurance, "we'll take a closer look and figure it all out."

I couldn't help but smile. "Thanks," I mumbled sheepishly.

I went inside, stripping off my soaked, frost-caked layers and relishing in the comforting warmth of the mansion's shelter. I quickly rushed to the bathroom and stripped off the piss-stained undergarments. My undershirt had also been soaked through in sweat.

Looking in a cracked mirror in the bathroom, I frowned. My left eye was perfectly intact, a minor cut trickling slowly now above it. However, I was still blind in that eye, and could not help but shudder at the remembrance of the voice I had heard, of the sadistic needle.

Wanting more than anything to dismiss it as hallucination or nightmare, I shook my head, trying to ground myself in the real world once again. Still, a damp bone-chilling cold had settled over me, giving my goosebumps.

I went back to the foyer. In the main room Heero was making a fire. Trowa and Quatre were nowhere to be found.

I looked at the still open door. Duo was still standing in it, staring down the godless storm with an adamantly determined fury and righteous indignation, as if he could grapple with and cast down the force that whipped up the bitter calamity. Seeing him like that, I was sure Duo would give it one hell of a fight.

-end "Expedition", (the new) Part 4 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

Masamune Reforged '06


	6. 5 Overwhelm

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and...), angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death?  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to After crashlanding in the Arctic, the pilots take shelter in an old, empty mansion. Tensions and tempers begin to rise. In an effort to establish contact with the outside world, Duo leads them on an expedition into the tundra. A blizzard picks up; forcing them to head back to their shelter and Wufei is mysteriously blinded in his left eye.

Part 5- Overwhelm

Vision in my left eye did not return. Both Heero, Trowa and Quatre examined it on the night of the failed expedition. Nothing could explain it. Despite the event that I could swear had happened out in the tundra, no direct damage had been done to my eye at all. It even moved and blinked in tandem to my good one. Nonetheless, I was still distraught and disturbed by the event, and hid what I had heard from the others. There was no way they'd believe me. I certainly would never accept such a preposterous claim. The best I could do, I resolved, was to go about as if everything were fine and well.

Duo made us all swear that we would make another attempt to reach civilization, if there was any in this forsaken waste, as soon as the weather cleared. He predicted we'd be back on the front line, where we belonged, in no more than a week's time. Jack Frost had other ideas.

The storm did not let up. For almost four days the demonic cold spell rattled the timbers and rapped at the windows of the mansion as a monstrous wind pelted ever-growing flakes at the ancient foundation. On the fifth day, just before sunset, there was finally a lull in the storm. Duo was crestfallen, however, as the accumulation now reached the second story, so that by exiting through the windows on that floor, could enter and exit as though onto an eternally raised ivory balcony. Unfortunately, the still fluffy powder would not support any of our weights, as Duo himself found out first hand. On his first step he sunk chest-deep into the white dunes. The more he fought, ostensibly hellbent on departing from the mansion forever, the deeper he sunk into the cold heap. After pulling him out, we collectively reasoned that floundering about in the elements was a sure way to get ourselves killed.

We needed a plan of escape. But where would we find it? Out in the unknown, with no knowledge of the region or even an initial sense of direction we had to find a saving grace somewhere in the abandoned mansion to guide us away from it. Such was the Gordian knot presented before us, this time, wearing ring mail that no Macedonian sword could simply cut.

- - - - - 

Time's passing is a strange thing. One cannot properly comprehend how much has been lost without giving up more of it. One morning I woke up and realized it had been one solid month since we crashlanded in the desolate Arctic. I marveled at the speed with which time had whirled by. I was able to walk around on my bad leg with only a slight limp. I groaned and looked around my room with my good eye.

The scenery had ceased to hold my attention as it originally had when we'd found the old mansion. Although I still found myself aimlessly roaming the halls from time to time, I had grown used to the drafty castle. Everything became commonplace, normal. My bare, dreary room became comfortable and the dull, repetitive routine I went through every day no longer made me angry or frustrated. I thought that if it hadn't been so far removed from the rest of the world, the mansion would be a fairly nice place to live.

The others didn't seem to share my opinion.

Heero was unable to sleep in the house. My guess was as good as anyone else's as to what was the exact reason why he was unable to catch more than two hours of sleep at a time. We had all grown used to the generator's humming. We had blocked out the howling snowstorms outside our windows. We had adapted to the bitter cold in the rooms and the creaky, drawn out groans the wood would make. Why Heero couldn't do this was beyond me. He had abandoned his room early on, choosing to sleep on a gigantic rug in the main hall. I certainly found this a bizarre thing for the normally collected and stoic Yuy to do, but nobody ever commented on the ridiculously deep circles under his eyes or the way he would drift into half-sleep in mid-conversation.

Just as Heero was locked into wakefulness and vigilance, Quatre and Trowa were entrenched in a private little tiff. I understood that every couple has rough times, and I dismissed this as such. But even still, their black feelings towards the other grew. While I was not around to witness much of it, things got so bad that for a few nights Trowa slept in a separate room. As far as I could tell they never fought over one particular subject. Scattered and random, I concluded that their inherent differences were the battle's cause. As the days went on, the two adjusted to the other, so as to avoid conflict and bite back stinging remarks. Quatre talked less, not wanting to anger Trowa with his "whining". Trowa became more vocal, always using a stiff, forced form of kindness towards his blonde counterpart, when not showing open disdain. The fights decreased, but the situation was not improving. If anything, it was slowly getting worse and worse.

Duo… I really didn't know what the hell was going on with Duo. I don't mean to say that he had turned into a giant insect or anything like that. In fact, the only real differences I noticed in Duo was that he had become very edgy, emotional. But the American stuffed down his troubles, keeping the motor mouth turned down to the lowest level I had ever seen. Heero was grateful for Duo's faded enthusiasm, and the two were getting along better than ever. The endless flirtation between the two also seemed to disappear. It seemed like they would manage to be just friends. I should have known that true character and strong emotion, no matter how buried or subdued under masks, always find a crack to break out through.

- - - - - 

It was another day, identical to every other that we had gone through since first arriving. Still pushing sleep from my eyes, I was limping down one of the poorly lit corridors when I heard laughter emanating from one of the doors, bouncing off the wooden walls and echoing ominously. I straightened up, feeling both alert and uneasy. I had woken in the darkness of the day and the weird pain in my chest that I had woken up with seemed to be a premonition of some sorts. I must have slept the wrong way.

My worries were stayed strong in my mind as I moved from door to door in search of the source. A similar but even more sinister chuckle broke out from behind one of the doors. I walked over towards it, remembering that it had always been locked on my sojourns through the castle. My hand closed around the cold yellow knob, and it turned easily in my hand, door clicking open.

"What are you doing Wufei?"

I spun around, slamming the door with all my might as my heart leaped up in my throat. The cracking clamor the door made, being roughly thrown into the frame, shook my ears, mounted fear set off by the sudden startle. My cheeks flushed crimson red and my mouth opened to hurl curses and threats, but something stopped me. I froze, immobile, stuck, as I could only suppress a scream of anger and frustration and evilly eye Duo.

"Sorry Fei-man," He chuckled, half heartedly concealing his smile behind the black trim of the sweater he was wearing. I felt like an absolute fool. I was jumping ten feet in the air like a timid, little, mousy woman all over some stupid nothing. Duo began to laugh more freely as I stood up and glared at him. "Guess I gave you a little bit of a fright." Duo laughed as he spoke, and for some reason, I burst into laughter with him.

Duo began to laugh uncontrollably, his long brown hair swirling around as his body convulsed in the throes of amusement. He brought his hand away from his mouth, and the clear sound of his chuckles became louder, echoing off the mansion walls. I began to laugh louder, and earned a curious glance from Shinigami's violet eyes. Still, Duo went on laughing, a strange sense washing over me as time trickled by and Duo seemed no closer to the end of his fit. Uncomfortably, I continued to laugh along with him, although my chuckles soon sounded hollow and fake.

Finally, we both stopped, everything around us falling silent. I suddenly felt drained of life. I straightened myself up, gathering my composure. Duo turned back to the library door he had emerged from, and the feeling that something was seriously wrong ate further into my mind. Duo was standing too upright, rigid. His back might have felt like that of a wooden mannequin, throwing off a fake image of elegance. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but I didn't have the chance as he softly spoke first:

"Do me a favor Fei-man?" His question was sincere, but his voice still a cover. "I'll be in here for a little while longer, don't wait up for me at breakfast. Tell Quatre to throw mine in the fridge or whatever."

With that, he began to walk away, his steps falling heavily on the creaky wood floor. I almost turned to leave. I almost decided that I didn't care what was bugging Duo. I almost didn't feel the rise of desire to be by his side so that I might comfort him. But the memories of his always helping me came back, strongly replaying in my mind. When he gave me his hand and pulled me up from the pit, when he took me seriously about my blind eye, neither calling me crazy nor leaving me to fend for myself, the two things I would have probably done to him…

And suddenly I did have a small desire to have him by my side, to return all that he had given me. 

But, that desire grew. By the time Duo reached the large, extremely comfortable looking chair opposite the library door where I was lingering, it had risen like a crescendo, shaking everything inside of me with its roar. Surprised that I had not left yet, Duo's gazed at me questioningly. He did have an answer, one that I didn't expect. I walked over to the red, satin chair just as he sat down in it, his dazzling purple eyes never leaving my face.

"What's wrong Duo?" I began, my lips suddenly very dry, even after having a drink of water upon waking. He looked away, trying to end the conversation. "You've been acting strange for some time now." He still didn't look at me, or give any response. I wanted to kick myself for my words immediately. Calling him strange? That would never do…

"What do you care?" He tried to brush me off. The facade was slipping.

I reached out, my hand almost trembling as I gently put it on his shoulder. "I do care Duo, even if I don't always act that way. You've been there for me a lot. I want to help you too, however I can."

I paused, surprised at my own words, but not as surprised as when I suddenly reached out, my fingers brushing against the nape of his neck, a chill raking my spine as I felt the smooth, soft, white flesh. He turned to me, the beauty radiating from every feature in his face. I whispered, "You are very important to me."

"Wufei." The word slid out of Duo's mouth, landing on my ears like a graceful, elegant bird.

I couldn't tell you what I was feeling. I had never felt these feelings for another male in my life; and suddenly behaving like this would normally have caused me to pinch myself to wake up from what had to be some strange dream. Had I ever dreamt this before? Was it just something about Duo? He certainly was beautiful, that much, anyone with eyes to see could tell. No. I had met many good looking men in my time, never afflicted by this kind of firecracker result. I was straight…right?

I tossed all concerns and questions away in an instant. Only two thoughts remained in my head. I wanted to help Duo whatever way I could, and another, more personal thought. This being considered, my next few words seemed ridiculous and horrified me, even as I spoke them:

"It's because Heero doesn't return your feelings, isn't it?"

Duo's eyes opened wide. I felt the muscles in his shoulders and neck gather in tense energy as he stood up, out of the satin chair. As he came to within a few inches of my face, he shouted, "What the _fuck_ is _that_ supposed to mean? What kind of question is that? I ought to rip your smirking head off your shoulders and ram it up your ass, right next to that fucking stick that's always lodged in there!"

"Shh, calm down," I remained calm, his reaction earning nothing from me but a slight smile. He had just snapped on me, his mood thrown out of whack by the surprise question. "We both know certain things to be true …so…."

"How do you know what I feel!" Duo shouted, flinging his arms around in wild gestures that came close to clobbering me. "What the HELL do you think _you_ know about Heero, or _me_? Shit. To hell with you!"

"Duo, please," I tried to calm him down. I wouldn't want anyone hearing us.

"Fuck you!" He spat the words at me, breaking his gaze from mine at the very same moment. His cheeks were flushed. His fingers balled in tight fists. His eyes burned with love, love for a person that did not love him back. And that's why his whole body shook, why his sorrow poured out of all his movements, why he shouldn't be upset with me, but with Heero. "You're the worst kind of bastard, saying dumb shit like that!" But, I guess he had to be angry with someone... and I had sort of asked for it… "You always act like you know what's right and what others should do but-"

The braided beauty in front of me kept rambling on, but I cut him off, gently placing my hands on both of his shoulders. I tried to make him look me in the eyes. He wouldn't. Speaking slowly and hoping I would convey to him how serious I was, I said:

"Duo, I know that you're going through something unpleasant. Maybe I don't know what it is. But I do want to help you anyway I might be able to. I'm here for you. Don't forget that. Don't run away from me." I gave his shoulders a soft squeeze. The emotional youth made eye contact with me; sad, lonely eyes. "All I want is for you to be happy. I'll always be looking out for you."

Duo licked his lips as his eyes stayed locked with mine. Black and violet; a nice combination. I thought back to a few days ago, when I had looked into his eyes just after losing vision in my left. There had been something in those eyes, a part of Duo I had never noticed before. After finally touching it though, I began to find little signs of it in everything he did. How he walked, laughed, cursed, smiled… As hard as he tried to hide it, I had caught a small glimpse of his real self. It wasn't the person who always made jokes, it wasn't the person who raved about being Shinigami, it wasn't the happy-go-lucky idiot; it was the person pretending to be those things. After seeing it I knew where the origin of my attraction had swelled up from, and I wanted to find that part of Duo again.

So I kept looking into his stunning amethyst depths, as if to absorb everything inside him. He looked back at me, heads gravitating slightly towards each other's. Duo's orchid orbs were more open, more beautiful than even before. I peered, as if tumbling head over heels, down down into them. He was lonely too, just like I was. He too was tired of fighting without seeing any real fruit from our struggles. He put on a brave face and kept a fresh clip of jokes in a pocket on his paper-thin bulletproof vest. He-

In a flash, I thought I saw something alien, something I'd never had any indication of before. I kept myself from shivering, but not from taking a small step backwards. What was it that I saw through those eyes? My mistake already involuntarily made, I tried to pull him to me, but his arms locked up, and he began to move away.

My arms slipped back to my sides. We remained silent in each other's faces, Duo looking at me with a scrutinizing glare that made me avert my eyes from his. He had not wanted me to see that much… I felt incredibly uncomfortable, yet all I wanted was to move closer to him and wrap my arms around him. I felt lightheaded.

Then he whirled away, picking up his book and fleeing the room rapidly, leaving me with my thoughts.

- - - - -

It took me a very long time to figure out was really going on with Duo. I simply assumed he was upset over some stupid fight he and Heero had had. After lunch, I gave into my curiosity and sought out Heero to ask him what was going on, and if he had anything to do with the Deathscythe pilot's awkward behavior. I received a death glare and then found myself trapped into a day of backbreaking labor in the stuffy basement, helping Heero and Trowa sort through loads of junk. Heero hoped to find some way out of the old mansion. Trowa had recommended that one of the endless storage rooms might hold something of use.

I failed to give any real thought about my interaction with Duo until later that evening. Quatre forced us to stop our futile scavenger hunt just before dinner. Trowa growled angrily at the poor blonde, whose chipper attitude was instantly shattered when he saw his tall lover's negative reaction. Both Heero and the Heavyarms pilot obviously felt that eating was no real priority compared with finding a way to escape the Arctic prison.

- - - - - 

I was grateful to leave the overwhelming heat of the basement, but Trowa seemed to take the generator's stifling smolder with him. And he let off all the steam on Quatre. Tired and frustrated from an unavailing, draining effort, the Heavyarms pilot was a blot of heated darkness towards his formerly 'lovey-dovey' partner. They had been fighting frequently, true. But that night, Trowa treated his counterpart with such disdain that I had trouble eating dinner, unable to tear my eyes away from the shattered Arab as he struggled to keep himself composed.

The most interesting part of all this was that Trowa did it without saying more than five words. In fact, I sensed that Trowa's quiet was a weapon for him, a way to really dig into Quatre. Quatre always tried to be the hopeful one in the group, insisting on making conversation just for the sake of us all interacting together. But, every time Quatre began to tell a story or even ask a polite question about passing the salt, Trowa would flash him the most disapproving stare I had ever seen the Latin youth muster. Expressing disapproval and irritation with only a slight narrowing of his eyes and a pained grimace, Trowa effectively silenced Quatre for the entire evening.

With both Duo and Quatre quiet during dinner, the only sounds where those of chewing and utensils clanking. The hum of the generator sounded louder and louder to my ears as every second of the dead mute hung over the five of us.

"So," Heero's voice surprisingly ended the silence, "What were you up to all day Duo? We could have used your help downstairs you know."

Duo's cheeks flushed bright red. He took a deep breath as if preparing to reply, but I was faster, "Hmph! Come on Heero, leave him alone. It's not like we got anything out of it. Whatever he did was probably more worthwhile."

The Prussian blue eyes shot me another threatening glare and Heero opened his mouth to let out a retort, but my comment had caught him off guard. Right then I had no fear of the Wing pilot and easily met his gaze, knowing he wouldn't say anything in reply. I was finding it effortless to meet people's glances, even with my one blind eye. Actually, I believe my handicap was a slight advantage for me, unnerving Heero's potential response.

Heero said nothing, promptly cleared his plate. He exited the kitchen, tromping down the creaky steps back into the basement. A second later, a clank announced Duo's completion of dinner. He put his dishes in the sink. He still did not utter a sound as he left, but his eyes caught mine for a moment. The violet shimmered as if grateful, but still confused.

I lost my appetite as my thoughts turned inward. Duo had looked at me in somewhat of a glazed stupor, like one unsure of what reasons lay beneath his own reaction. It catalyzed me into deeply questioning myself and my recent actions. Why was I sticking my neck out into the middle of Duo and Heero's matters? Why did I care so much about their bitter relationship? Was I falling into the middle of their battle, that I had watched from the side for so long? Had I been finally sucked into it? Why? By my feelings for Duo? The lame answer was: because Duo was a fellow Gundam pilot. I was just being a friend…yeah…right… I knew there was more to it, I just had to sort through my jumbled feelings to find it.

- - - - - 

I was still turning those questions over in my mind later that night. The five of us had fallen into a pattern that we followed almost everyday; gathering in one of the gargantuan common chambers on the mansion's first floor. Out of all the elaborate and gaudy rooms in the house, we had taken a liking to one in particular, which Quatre had dubbed the Hunt Room.

Not unlike the other large rooms in the house, the floor, walls and ceiling were entirely paneled woodwork, with ceiling supports made of trees as thick around as cars. The fireplace in the Hunt Room was the largest in the house, reaching up to half the height of the chamber. This grand, masterful brickwork not only made the Hunt Room the warmest. It also jutted out from the wall so as to hold the main decoration of the room atop it, a 14 foot high, stuffed polar bear. The species had gone extinct long ago, but this one last mammoth beast stood up on its two back legs, looming over the room like a crystal king. It was alone on the far wall of the Hunt Room, but was accompanied by antlers, skins, and other stuffed animals mounted high on the others, accenting the rusticity of the room. I noticed that all the musket racks had been ransacked, and some mantles were stripped of their showpiece. The wood floor was barely visible beneath the many fur rugs that lay across it; most with their mouths wide open. Unfortunately, the wear of time had stained and tore many of the rugs, their magnificence marred by brown splotches, by holes and tears. I had never been a fan of hunting. It had become like dishonorable child's play hundreds of years ago. But this room was quickly becoming my favorite in the mansion.

And that's where we were gathered. Trowa and Heero sat on a black bear skin rug, feverishly tinkering with a radio-like device they had found in the basement after dinner. Duo was sprawled out on a huge, cushy green couch, reading a huge book on religion. The wind outside was howling, as we had never heard it before. Quatre was still looking miserable, but was besting me for the third straight time that night in chess.

I lost the first chess match because my mind was a jumble. I was unable to concentrate on anything outside of my own mind. Quatre defeated me in such a short time that I almost lost my temper. I forced myself to focus on the second match, sweeping across the board and delighting in the revenge. Halfway through, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Duo put down his book, yawn and look around the room. He picked up the book again. I barely paid any attention to it the first time, but by the ninth and tenth time he repeated this I was wondering what his problem was.

Duo never stayed quiet this long! God only knew what he normally did when he became bored. But he didn't zip around or pester anyone. He just sat still and tried to read. Quatre had his back turned to Duo, but I could see perfectly how agitated the braided Shinigami was. Soon he was writhing around in his seat. I could see him trying to keep still, trying to read his book, trying not to look over at Heero. It scared me. Whatever was causing him so much torment must have been a force beyond reckoning.

Thus I was distracted and again lost the match to Quatre. I started a third just to stay there longer, to examine Duo further. I began to try to piece together what his problem might be, why he would be acting so strangely. Why hadn't I given it more thought? He had been acting nothing like himself since we had crash landed. Was it cabin fever? What role did Heero play in all of it? My brain felt like it would short circuit over pondering what the cause of Duo's pain was. I had to know what hunger was consuming him and had decided to ask him in the morning when Quatre looked up at me and said:

"Checkmate."

My eyes flashed from Duo, to the grinning blonde, to the chess board. Impossible! Not already!

"That's not checkmate," I said, clearing my throat. Quatre screwed up his face, looking at the board. "See?" I continued, "If I do this," I picked up my King, "then-"

BANG!

The great thud resounded off the walls. My chess piece fell to the floor with a clank that was almost impossible to hear. Quatre nearly jumped out of his skin, craning his neck around to see what Heero, Trowa and I were already looking at.

"**I fucking can't take this anymore**!" Duo screamed in agony as he looked around the room with insane eyes. "**It's too much goddamnit and I can't take anymore!"**

His alabaster cheeks were fully flushed a deep wine color. His hands were buried in his thick hair, knuckles white as he gripped his brown length in demented savagery. In his eyes throbbed an intense reflection of helplessness, suffering and anger. I was stunned, but nothing compared to Heero, who was still crouched over the radio. Heero looked like he had just been told he'd have to marry Relena Peacecraft: scared out of his mind. Duo shut his eyes, deep pain visible on his face. He hunched over slightly; strands of hair fell over his face, accenting his unsettling appearance.

Quatre was already on his feet, approaching Duo. In the brief silence he asked, voice shaky "Duo? Wha-"

"**AHHH**!" A howl of unintelligible, sheer fury burst out of Duo as he picked up his book and threw it to the floor. Quatre backed away immediately to Trowa's side. Outside the wind picked up even more, threatening to drown out the shout. "Fucking going to die!" Duo dropped his hands to his side, his eyes snapping wide open. "Die in this house! I can't take anymore trapped in this **HELL**!"

"Duo cut it out!" Heero finally stood up, screaming at Duo. A desperate, afraid waver sucked the power from his command. Duo didn't even glance in his direction, but kept on, his yells turning into rambling.

"I hate this place! **I hate it**!" Duo's voice screeched even louder, and he stomped on the floor, crushing his fallen book underfoot. "I hate the snow! Fucker god! I can't take being trapped like this anymore!" The stomping kept up, Duo's boot shaking the floor on every other syllable. The book on Catholicism was ripping into a million pieces.

Definitely cabin fever, I thought to myself. Heero began moving towards Duo, despite the violent rage burning in his comrade. "Duo. Stop!" Heero raised his voice, but it still did nothing. It was barely audible over the furor of the storm outside. It was nothing to Duo's rabid energy.

"The war," Duo's voice suddenly dropped. As I looked at him, he seemed to realize how inappropriately he was acting, like one sensing some order in the chaos ripping him apart. But the monstrous calamity inside of him quickly buried this semblance of tranquility. He clenched his jaw even more, and was soon shouting again, with more fervor and energy than before, "What about the war? We're supposed to be killing OZ but instead we're fucked up here! I can't stand it! Who will fight in my place? Who's going to bring swift oblivion to all those godless bastards? Not me! Not Duo Maxwell, not Shinigami!" He began to chuckle, an even more unnerving sound filling the room. "Shingami can't be Shinigami without death!"

I was clueless. Was this just insane rambling? What was Duo trying to get at? Surely he didn't take that Shinigami nonsense seriously? Still, he was very upset about our absence from the war for the Colonies. Duo was shaking now, body swinging back and forth on his feet. Most of the color had drained from his face, leaving him white like the snow covering the windows. Trowa was holding Quatre's hand, the shorter boy cringing while witnessing his friend in such horrible pain. Heero was still yelling for Duo to get a grip, but the storm outside drowned him out.

"We need to get out of here!" Duo turned to me suddenly. "Right Wufei? We have to get away. Away... I have to get back to the war. Nothing but fucking snow here."

Heero walked right up to the raving Deathscythe pilot. Duo turned away, as I gave no reply. He looked even more disheveled, posture bent, violet eyes awash in torture, breath ragged. He looked at Heero, who stopped a mere foot from Duo.

Heero's arm shot out, connecting with a crack like thunder. Heero didn't just slap the braided boy upside the head; he punched him with all his might. Duo fell down with a crash, one of the rugs breaking his fall as he flew back from Heero. I blinked. Everything was silent. Sudden anger overran me as I saw that Duo was bleeding. I made to scold Heero for striking so hard, but the Japanese killer began to yell:

"So we're stuck here. SO WHAT!" Heero was as loud as Duo had been, but was more calm and collected. "We can't just bitch about it! That sure as hell won't work." The sturdy Yuy stood over Duo, dark navy blue eyes flickering with passion. "Yes, there's still a war. No, you can't fight it from here. But you can't ever be a part of it if you go crazy out here."

The wind was gone. It had just settled down for a short while. It would be back. The popping and cracking noise from the fireplace was now the loudest sounds as Heero stopped, turning his back on the fallen American. Trowa shook his head, expression undecipherable. Quatre ran from his side, cradling Duo's head in his arms when he reached the bleeding boy, still too stunned and dazed to move.

Heero went on, "We shouldn't be just sitting around here doing nothing, or we'll all go crazy. If you want out of here so badly, I suggest you start helping us look for a way instead of sight seeing around the haunted fucking house." Heero ended in disgust, obviously addressing me as well as Duo.

I started laughing, catching everyone off guard. Heero glared at me darkly.

"Words only carry progress if they lead to successful action," I stated coolly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Heero spat back, meeting my gaze with fiery anger.

"It means that we need to start looking for pertinent information as to how to get out of here, not just rummaging desperately like scavengers," I said, assuredly. "Picking through all this useless junk is as helpful as watching the snow pile up. We can't leave through a locked exit door."

Heero hated it when I spoke in metaphor. He was absolutely furious with me now. I wasn't about to give up any ground. Luckily, Quatre stepped in between us, "We are trying. We all want to get back to fighting for the Colonies. It's easy to say all that Wufei, but how are you so sure we won't find anything helpful?"

"Why would that radio be buried under tons of crap if it was the only possible link to the outside world?" I asked in response, pointing to the heap of metal that had been uncovered from the storage rooms. "Because it obviously was a piece of trash to those before us. How is it supposed to help us? It won't. That goes for just about everything down in that mess."

"You're just assuming," Heero snapped. "I might be able to fix it. Your pessimism isn't helping, and it's pissing me off! We may find something..."

"If there was something to find, the people before us would have found it and gone away with it. That, or they would have left it in a place where it could help others. And if you didn't figure it out, we're not the first people to be trapped here. Lots of them died."

It was the first time anyone here had said it aloud, but we all felt it to be true. True, there were no corpses, no sign of death aside from the snow covered gravestones, but we all knew it was the case. I had felt it in my heart since early on, that we were in a situation many before us had been overwhelmed by.

Quatre, still holding Duo, asked, "What do you suggest?"

I smiled, amused and shrugged; "The exit isn't inside the mansion."

Trowa finished my thought for me, "Get out. We should seek outside help."

I nodded, "But even that's not so easy. We all nearly died out there. Don't forget that. The weather is brutal and unpredicatable. We have no clue where we are. We don't know how far away or in what direction we need to head."

"Sounds like you've already given up," Heero spat at me, venom dripping off his words. He was trying to bait me into a fight. …I wasn't going to give him what he wanted.

"I'm not," I bit back my anger and my pride. "I'm not the fool blindly denying how bad our situation actually is. We've all been carrying on like this is some kind of vacation. This could be our coffin."

Duo had finally stood up, holding a tissue that Quatre had fetched to his bloody face. The Arab was kneeling down over the remains of Duo's tattered book, carefully picking up the loose pages. Duo spoke calmly, although his voice was weak and muffled, "We have to risk it out in the wild again. Even if it's a shot in the dark I don't care. I'll keep blasting away until I run out of bullets!"

There was no reasoning with illogical sentiments like that... I sat down, shaking my head. "And who says we'll be any luckier than before? Perhaps it'll be even worse. You saw how impossible it was to move with all that snow built up. Even if we knew which direction to head in, which we don't, we're not properly equipped."

All was silent, everyone grim. Heero shook his fist at me and said with adamant determination, "I don't like how you've been acting. I'm not the one waiting for a miracle to fall from the sky, you are! I'll go fiddle with useless crap, which has more hope in it than some wimp who just wants to give up. If-"

Quatre's sudden gasp cut Heero off. The blonde stood up from where he had been piecing together Duo's book and began to speak, his words blurring with Heero's. I heard neither but I did see the tattered parchment in Quatre's hands. It was a map.

-end "Overwhelm" Part 5 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

Masamune Reforged '06


	7. 6 Choice to See

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and 5x2, angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death?  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to I am at this point clarifying the status of this story as deathfic or not.

IF you believe that the end of someone's existence is 'death', then no, this is not a deathfic.

IF you believe that the end of someone's physical life is 'death', then yes, this is a deathfic.

Figure out where you stand. I know where I do.

Summary: The five pilots are trapped in an old mansion in the tundra. The situation has caused them much pain and stress, and its beginning to show. Duo finally completely broke down, and only a fist from Heero could calm him down. While Duo wants to escape more than anything, Wufei cautions against venturing out into the wild without any knowledge of the region. Luckily, at that moment, they come across a crumpled, worn document in one of the older books in the mansion.

Part 6- Choice to See

I sat absolutely still. My only action was clenching my jaw, which had just let out a surprised gasp. All the things I had just said seemed to be proved wrong by this grand twist of luck. Just as I had voiced my distaste for searching aimlessly for some miracle, one had found us. My embarrassment burned inside of me, my face flushing. I wondered if Heero or maybe Trowa would snub me privately about my bested prediction. But considering the strain everyone had been subjected to recently, and the fact that Heero and I had gotten to the point where we both felt at odds against each other, I guessed only Heero would try to put me down.

"What is that?" Duo asked, speech garbled by the tissues soaking up the blood on his face. Both his mouth and nose were bleeding. Heero had not held back at all. My desire to sock one to the Wing pilot was only barely checked by discretion. I wanted to cause him the same pain he made Duo feel, all of them.

"I really don't know," Quatre, who still held the tattered paper was gently and slowly unfolding the crumpled sheet. "It fell out of the book you were reading Duo." All of us gathered around Quatre as he pulled back the cuffs of the brown sweater that was far too big for him, biting back our curiosity as the Arab slowly unrolled the ancient parchment.

"A map," Trowa breathed simply, catching a glimpse of the inside and confirming my earliest guess. I heard Duo exhale and I could see how excited Quatre was from the way he spread out the crinkled map as fast as possible, but still without chancing a rip. Duo was now holding what was left of the book, which, from the cover, appeared to be a historian's adaptation of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and reflections and writings on the piece by various religious men of different eras.

Chuckling softly, Duo spoke, "Seek salvation in me, huh?"

The old map was now fully opened and each of us scanned it in a moment of absolute silence, aside from the wind outside and the pop and crackling of the dying fireplace. Heero, however, scowled darkly at the parchment and said, "I can't read that. I don't think it's in any language I've ever seen. Looks like gibberish."

Quatre suddenly turned the map on its side. Trowa reached out to stop him, glancing closer at something that had caught his attention, but the blonde held on, and a rip snaked out across the area between their grasping hands.

"Careful with it!" I scolded, stepping back some. Trowa glared at Quatre.

"Gentle, gentle with that baby. This might be our way out," Duo added, hope filling his voice. It made him sound like the old, lively braided babbler; almost. To me it sounded a bit awkward, like I had grown used to the melancholy American that he had become over the past couple of days in the snowbound house.

I shook my head. The last thing Duo needed after his nervous breakdown was to get his hopes up, just to dash them on the ice if the map didn't save us. "Can anyone read it?" I asked, raising my voice. The wind was howling loudly again. "I can't interpret the markings or even tell which way to hold it."

"Incredibly old," Trowa observed, his monotone words almost too soft to be heard with the clamber of the snowstorm outside. "Some kind of Old Earth language and…"

The tall boy stopped mid-sentence as Quatre suddenly flipped the map upside down. Trowa instinctively reached out for the paper, but thought better of it. Quatre looked dazed and said in a humbled way; "I really don't know what I'm looking at. No part of the Earth looks like this." There was a boyish astonishment and wonder in his tone.

"Flip it back over," Trowa advised the blonde. I caught irritation in the stoic's normally blank voice.

"Do you know which way is right?" Quatre asked in response, keeping the paper as he had it and cocking his head sideways. "That word looks like Jamaica."

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Heero jerk back, but Duo was speaking, "We'll have to examine it by looking at the geography and the symbols. Don't rely on reading the language."

"Hn," Heero grunted. "What's that down there?" He asked, pointing to a corner of the map.

"Let him see it for a minute," Trowa spoke to Quatre, but his words fell on deaf ears as Quatre squinted and lowered his head until his golden bangs almost touched the paper. Trowa began to repeat himself, agitation evident in his words and air, "Let him see-"

"Is this the mansion we're in right here?" The Sandrock pilot cut him off and pointed to a blocky symbol on the map with writing underneath. Four heads leaned in close to inspect, but Heero remained motionless.

"That symbol. It does look something like this old place," Duo said, focused on where Quatre had pointed.

"Are you sure?" I asked him. I couldn't make any sense at all from the map. How could he?

"No," Duo shrugged, loose hair falling over his shoulders. "When we first found this place it was in the middle of a blizzard. I've only seen the outside once or twice since then, but this symbol does remind me of this place. It could be our loca-"

"When else did you go outside?" Heero asked the Deathscythe. Duo smiled back mischievously and shrugged. Heero turned to Quatre and raised his voice a notch, "Could I see the map? I think I can make out the words in that corner."

I don't know if Quatre was ignoring people on purpose, or if he was being incredibly stupid, but he didn't even flinch at Heero's words, asking instead, "What's this other symbol?" He pointed to a symbol like the one where the mansion was supposedly marked, but larger. A gigantic crest sat in the middle of a structure pictured in fading ink.

Heero tried again, "Those words look like Japanese-"

Quatre was deaf. "We could be holding it the wrong way," He frowned. "Maybe-"

"Would you let him look at the goddamn map Quatre?" Trowa suddenly barked at his beau, causing the blonde to step back onto my foot. Trowa's eyes glimmered with emerald anger and disgust. He leered over the shorter Winner heir menacingly.

"S-sure," Quatre seemed so confused. Meekly, he handed the paper to Heero, who walked over to a large table and laid the map out next to a stuffed fox. Duo followed directly behind and began to fiddle with a lamp.

I stood directly behind Quatre, as if I was also petrified by Trowa's alarming outburst and glued to the spot by the furious glare he directed at Quatre. I also felt the lance of his silent storm, my gaze pierced to his own. I too could see the overpowering anger and frustration in the sea green eyes of the quiet youth. Was it hate in his eyes?

The moment I identified the dark emotion, I shuddered and my stare fell to the wooden floor. I dropped my head to my chest. The two normally sugar-sweet lovers had been quarreling like I had never seen them before. It was terrible to watch. It was a thing I should not watch.

"I'm really sorry Trowa," Quatre sadly whispered, his words almost escaping my ears in the scream of the wind outside the thick wooden walls.

The apology did little. The lanky pilot looked even angrier with his boyfriend, and I swore that he loomed over poor Quatre as if to strike him. Trowa opened his mouth to speak and a tremendous bang like a gunshot erupted in the room, making everyone jump two feet in the air. I whirled around to Heero and Duo, where a flash of light had also caught my attention simultaneously with the frightening noise.

"What the hell?" Trowa asked. He sounded angry and scared at the same time, the ill-timed shock jolting him. I could read the discomfort off his face. Quatre took the chance to take a pair of steps away from the Heavyarms pilot.

"Defunct old light bulb. It's broken," Heero calmly settled the matter, as he picked up the map and moved it to another table, where hopefully the lamp was working. Everyone kept silent for a full minute while Heero examined the map and I threw a log on the waning fire. I heard Heero say, "It says, 'To Nagasaki', and there's an arrow pointing down and off to the bottom left of the map."

"You can read something there?" I asked, skeptical at most.

"It's actually Japanese, but its only one little note, " Heero said dryly.

Duo practically pulled Heero away from the table and stood over the map, his long braid winding into a pile on the table. Energy filled him, suddenly resurrecting him, and he beamed as he spoke, "That mean's this way is north. So this is how you hold the map." He showed all of us, taking up the fragile map in his own hands. "And," He went on quickly; "since we're here it looks like-"

"Wait, wait," I stopped him, clearing my throat. "How do you know that that marking is the mansion?" I asked, not letting anyone slip possibilities and guesses by as truths. "Even if it resembles the mansion, you don't know if it represents it. It might just be coincidence."

"It's an old map in this old house," Duo defended his idea. "It would make sense to have the house's location on a map, especially isolated as it is here." I started to speak but Duo cut me off, rushing his words as if it would help us leave here sooner. "Even if it's not, we know that the area on the map is mostly northeast of Japan. So, this water is the Pacific and the two land masses are the Americas and the western edge of Eurasia."

Heero, who had been shouldered away by the suddenly bouncing Duo came back to his spot by the table, right up against Duo's side, and spoke, "I'm pretty sure this mansion is the symbol on the east, but more importantly, I've seen a piece of that symbol before, in this house, on tapestries and paintings."

"On a painting?" I asked, surprised. There were many tapestries in the old castle but despite exploring many of the accessible rooms, I had yet to see one painting, a note that I found mysterious to say the least.

Heero nodded and went on, "I think it's sort of a family crest, like the gentry used. A huge building like this could only have been built with lots of money, especially centuries ago. This map must be just as old as the mansion. Also, the geography is hardly anything like the real Earth. That puts it even before the Second World War."

Duo had been walking around the table for a little while now, growing ever the more restless, devouring every detail of the map. He stuck out a finger, slightly flecked with drying blood, to a point on the old guide and said, "This looks like a port, or town, to the south not very far from here. And there's another strange symbol on the western continent, Eurasia."

"If this map is so old, it probably isn't very accurate," Trowa pointed out, his blank as normal.

"Shit. Yeh, maybe," Duo conceded, dropping his hand. "Heero even said that a second ago, damnit. This map was probably made before satellites."

"It's way older than that," Trowa said. "If I had to guess, I would say this was drawn by some early explorers of the ancient Russian Empire, when many parts of Earth were unknown or desolate."

"That's pretty keen," Heero's voice was soft, but still sharp with the edge of doubt. He was in a pretty dark mood, and getting like that more and more frequently. He was still struggling daily to fall asleep, and although he'd succeeded slightly, he was still always tired, and therefore edgy. "How do you know that?"

"Some of the earliest and most successful people to colonize the Americas from across the Pacific were the czars, despots of ancient Russia. They created settlements in the far north, hoping to expand their empire. But it never really worked as well as they hoped. This was before the Revolution of Communism and in time the czars grew too greedy and too weak so that eventually..."

He trailed off; nobody was really listening to the history lesson. Everybody took a few minutes to have his thoughts to himself. Duo chose to poke the logs on the fire rather than cleaning up his bloodied face. Trowa and Heero stood over the map. I realized how tired I was and was wondering what time it was when Quatre broke the silence, speaking for the first time in a long while:

"Even if we know where we are, and have a slight clue where to go, we're still in the middle of a dangerous tundra and after the last heavy snow it'll be even more hazardous to traverse."

"On the colonies, snow is only artificially created for Christmas and skiing," Rubbing his eyes, hands practically sinking into the deep caves under his Prussian blue, Heero spoke grimly. " I've had a little VR training on survival in cold climates." He trailed off for a moment and I knew whatever else he had to say wouldn't be good news. "But that time… this is nothing like the simulation. It's far more intense."

"Well, we can't just stay here cuz' it's cold outside!" Duo threw out his arms. He looked ridiculous with dried blood and bits of tissue stuck to his face. "Better to go out there and try again-"

"And freeze to death in a ditch?" I finished the sentence for him, but not in the way I'm sure he had planned. "No. If we're going out again, we'll have to plan it out thoroughly. It would be better to stay here, even if the delay is hard, than to die like fools."

Duo began to protest ,but his face fell ashen and a shiver ran down his spine as it sunk in that we might still be trapped in the old house for some time to come. Seeing the doubt and fear growing in his features, I was reminded of his panic attack. Would Duo hold up? How long could he last before he freaked out again? The snowstorms could go on for days at a time. We might not get an opportunity for a long time. I hoped Duo wouldn't do anything rash...

I yawned, stretching and listening to the hum of the electricity generator and the whir of the storm outside. Trowa got up and began heading for the door without a word, but Quatre called after him:

"Hey Trowa. Where are you going?"

The lanky boy did not responded. The only indication that he had even heard Quatre was a slight pause in his step as he exited the Hunt Room.

I felt the sleep wearing me down quickly and, yawning again, suggested, "Why don't we get some rest? It's been a long night."

Quatre immediately rushed out, after Trowa probably. While I cleared the chessboard, Heero stalked off quietly, leaving Duo and I alone. Duo went and poked the embers in the grand fireplace. I looked at him, flickering in the rusty red light of the dying fire, sleep consuming me. My eyelids were as heavy as metal, even my blind left one. I yawned and thought about how nice it would be to sleep tonight. I mumbled something to Duo, who turned to me. The next thing was morning and the snow had stopped.

- - - - -

Dreams are funny things, especially when you don't remember them. The feeling you have when you wake from them, with only a vague idea what they were about, is indescribable and incomprehensible.

The next morning I woke up late, but well rested. I lay still in bed for minutes, not my normal behavior. I was keeping absolutely still, save the rise and fall of my chest pushing the sheets up and down, as if I was trying to prevent disturbing something. My mind flashed to the night before: the powerful storm, the raggedy map, Duo's breakdown. Duo.

My dream had had something to do with Duo, or at least I thought he had been in it. …? I felt a short breath force its way out between my lips. Why was I holding my breath? How much could a dream matter?

I turned my head, the phantom of sleep sliding away. Through the half- frosted window I could see the stretched Alaska tundra, snowdrifts mimicking great dunes, stretching up to the pale blue sky.

! From inside of me.

The faded bed sheets fell to the floor in a heap. I shot upright in bed, blood rushing to my head, dream slipping from my mind. A powerful pull was wrapping around the organs in my stomach, like one squeezes a washrag. I ran over to the solitary window and tried to open it. It was rusted shut. I put my hand to the glass, struggling to close my mouth. I swallowed involuntarily, convulsing, sweating, arms shaking futiely at the base of the window which would not yield. I couldn't get it open no matter how hard I tried, banging my head against the thick pane as I looked outside.

The landscape before me was an endless white sea, waves eternally frozen, futile sunlight beaming down, unable to unlock the shimmering plain. Great upthrusts of ice rose like hills, reaching out past the horizon. It was a very simple scene, but overwhelming in its sheer greatness.

I threw up on the radiator directly below the window, gagging and coughing.

Something made me feel uneasy, but at least my stomach felt much better. I looked disdainfully down at the muck that my body had rejected.

I remembered how eager, desperate Duo was to leave, but I also did not forget the potential for disaster that the steppe carried. I hoped he wouldn't go crazy again and rush out towards freedom, which would almost surely kill him. I threw on some clothes and went down to the main floor to look for him.

- - - - -

The Hunt Room was silent. I felt disappointed when I found Trowa there instead of Duo. The circus star was sitting at a table with the ancient map and the old, dusty books. He only looked up at me for a moment, and shrugged when I asked him if he had seen Duo. He didn't seem to be in a very good mood, and I wanted to find Duo. I went out into the hall.

- - - - -

The kitchen was bursting with life when I got there. Even though only Heero and Quatre were present, I noticed the change in them. Energy flowed out of their movements and atmospheres, where only lethargic frustration had ruled all of a night ago. The smell of appetizing food drifted through the air, owed to Quatre, who happily bustled around. He was busy putting away the massive jars of preserved spices and foodstuffs that he had prepared breakfast with.

Heero ate silently at the table, but his excitement was still noticeable. He shifted around in his chair too much; dropped pieces of egg off his fork and tapped his foot on the ground. Everyone's spirits seemed lifted by the end of the long snowstorm and although no one said it, I knew everyone was thinking about escape.

"Morning Wufei," Quatre chirped, nearly knocking me down with the cheerfulness in his voice and his beaming smile. "Want anything for breakfast? I found stored dried eggs. They're actually edibl-"

"No thanks," I grunted, sitting across from Heero. "I'm not hungry yet." I must have been on a different frequency from them, as I sure wasn't feeling lively or even slightly happy. Something kept nipping at the back of my mind.

"Here you go," Quatre pushed a quivering yellow pile of strange smelling eggs in front of me.

"I said I'm not hungry," I reasserted, furrowing my brows at Quatre.

The blonde smiled. Was he hard of hearing, or doing this out of displaced spite? They also say blondes can be airheads... Quatre began to whistle to himself as he went back to cooking more eggs. I stared at the plate in front of me. Had he forgotten his quarrel with Trowa? The way he acted, as if he were oblivious to the worsening problems he and Trowa had, was going to only hurt him in the long run. Quatre had never struck me as an airhead.

Duo burst into the room a second later and all eyes immediately turned on him. I blinked, and then snickered to myself. The self-proclaimed Shinigami looked ridiculous. As the door swung back, it kicked his snowshoes, which he was waddling around in, although they seemed the right size for him. Giant black pants made for cold climates swished as he walked in, rubbing together because they were so baggy. Duo was also wearing a long, bulky, black trenchcoat with the collar sticking up around his face. It seemed to swallow his visage whole. He had another, lighter jacket somewhere underneath. An enormous hood stuck up and was covering his long hair. He grunted as he rearranged a huge backpack on his shoulders, then shrugged and sent it crashing to the floor.

"Hey guys, ready to go?" The American was beaming as he spoke, although he looked hot as hell.

It was warmer than most days, and under all of that clothing Duo was feeling it. A healthy, shimmering decorated his face. He was sweating, but it almost made him more alluring. Strands of hair stuck to his brow, and I could feel the slightly tired, yet joyful aura around him.

Nobody moved until Quatre started to laugh to himself. Duo looked around at all of us, everything nice and quiet. Duo dropped his smile, asking, "What's with you guys?" I started chuckling into my sleeve. He was such a fool. "Heero, are you just going to sit there staring at me for the rest of the morning like that?"

Heero flinched, busted. The serious soldier looked down at his plate, as if he'd been interested in his food all this time, and not really a long haired American. Then he seemed to realize how ridiculous this was, and spoke, slowly grabbing for words, "What's with all of that stuff?" Brilliant cover… The lack of sleep was beginning to visibly wear Heero down.

"Heh," Duo grinned at Heero. "This is the kind of equipment we're going to want to wear when we leave. Parkas, snowshoes, as much anti-cold crap as possible. I have four other sets just like this one sitting out in the north hallway, except mine's the only set that's totally black."

Wing's pilot, still looking quite embarrassed, replied sincerely, "Did you really pull all that stuff together? Not bad."

Duo simply flashed a wide smile. He was in a very good mood, hopes risen. Heero smiled back, or at least tried to, parting his lips and raising his jaw line. Both were treating each other very cordially today, I noticed. How strange, the way they would smile and flirt towards each other with care and respect one moment, and the next, irritate and hurt. Wasn't the cut on Duo's lips from Heero last night proof of that? Was I the only one that remembered that? Or were they all just ignoring it?

Both certainly held strong feelings, but neither was sure of what exactly that entailed. They only sporadically acknowledged those concealed emotions, so of course they wouldn't hold hands or even make a real move. There was no relationship, but all the feelings and hopes and fears of one.

Heero was asking about where the gear had come from, clearly proud of Duo. The Deathscythe pilot grinned, absolutely beaming, as if there weren't a care in the world, or pounds of heavy clothing on his back. He was sweating quite a bit.

I pushed the full plate in front of me away, the fork clanking against a chipped cup. I cleared my throat and scoffed, "That gear's going to sit there for a good while, you know that."

There must have been something in my tone of voice, because suddenly, three pairs of eyes bore down at me, all at the same time. Violet tinted ones harbored the most negative energy by far, and their master spat: "What?"

I sighed, deep and slow, like a wise guru about to recall a simple lesson for a hopeless pupil. Duo's glare became even angrier as I spoke, "Don't you remember what we talked about last night?"

"The storm's gone!" Duo came close to yelling, "Now we-"

"The storm," I punctuated my words with force, but still in a calm manner, "Is never far away in the Arctic."

"But now that the map-"

"Only one half of the Arctic's destructive nature is capable to kill a man, even those with gear and skills we don't have."

"How the hell do you know? Are you a friggin' expert all of a sudden?"

"The map is far too old to be trusted fully. Do you want to risk-"

"The war! We can't stay-"

"Do you want to disappear in the snow?"

"I," Duo's voice trailed off and a hand covered his face.

He was silent, but I knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to scream, 'I have to get the fuck out of here!' at the top of his lungs. He was valiantly fighting the cabin fever, the mania churning inside of his mind. The hand came away from his face; clear beads fell to the tiled floor. He was soaked in sweat, but the handsome gleam was gone. Pale, clammy skin distorting his face. His eyes were muddled, out of focus. He was close to another panic attack. Duo was about to go crazy, so soon after recovering his good spirits.

"Wufei has a few good points," Trowa, directly behind me, caught me by surprise. I didn't know when he had entered. I whirled around to face the skinny pilot as he continued, "Nature should never be underestimated, or it could prove fatal. We don't know when another snowstorm might kick up." The monotone carried no emotion, but still sank Duo's hopes lower. "The map can't be trusted. Even if it was accurate, that was centuries ago."

Defeated, Duo turned away from me and in a low, strained voice, croaked, "What do you suggest then?"

I started to speak at the same time as Heero, but Quatre already had an answer, "Search. People from many different time periods have lived in this castle. Some of them must have left a log, something with directions to a nearby place."

Duo perked up, immediately after Heero added, "That's a decent idea." Zeal bubbled up in the drained braided youth, and I could hardly keep up with his words before he zipped out of the kitchen, hell-bent on escape. The four remaining sat still, all taken aback by Duo.

Trowa broke the silence, "Quatre?" He said it in the same damn emotionless tone.

"Huh?" The blonde snapped out of the trance he'd been in at the sound of his lover's words. He moved closer, as if he hadn't heard what Trowa had really said.

Trowa shook his head. "The sink is overflowing," The short Arab let out a gasp, scrambled over to the sink where he had been washing dishes, before being distracted. White suds had slid down to the floor.

"Ch," Trowa turned around to leave. "You got caught up in the talking but didn't pay attention to what was right under your nose." There was that disgusted venom in Trowa's voice again, as if the only way he could express emotion was in belittling his timid boyfriend. The Heavyarms pilot began to walk out.

Still struggling with the mess, Quatre called over his shoulder, "Trowa! Don't you want breakfast?" I could feel emerald eye's tick in angry response to the whining question. "I made eggs, just the -"

"Not hungry," Already out the door, Trowa's voice was very soft. I wondered if Quatre even heard it? He looked broken up, the mood ruined. Caught between chasing after his lover and finishing the dishes, Quatre finally settled on running out of the room, but turning in the opposite direction from the one Trowa had gone in, tears in his eyes.

With Duo, Trowa and Quatre suddenly gone, the kitchen became larger and quieter. I let out a soft sigh and stood up from the table, bringing my full plate to the garbage can. The whole way across the room I could feel Heero's eyes on my back. He was still at the table. The plop of dishes into the water was magnified by the tension I felt. Mindlessly, I stared out a small window. I couldn't tell if we were looking out over a vast steppe, or if we were under heaps of fallen snow. Either way, a complete, white blanket covered the view.

"What do you want, Yuy?" Tearing away from the blinding white, I finally met the blue eyes.

"Don't fuck around with Duo," Cold as the scenery, he spoke. I bit back a curse that I immediately desired to throw at him. "He isn't in the best condition right now."

"Oh really? I didn't notice. Thanks for pointing it out to me," Sarcasm and a smile made Heero grit his teeth. "You of all people shouldn't tell me how to treat Duo. You're not his boyfriend." Heero nearly lunged out of his seat at me, but I continued, "See his lip, his nose?" I was defiantly calm, the perfect answer to his stirring anger. "_Me_ fuck around with Duo? You're the one that treats him like shit."

Heero couldn't say anything to that. He knew I was right. We stood, looking at each other for a time, a smile never leaving my face. Finally, I said, "What do you want me to do, fill his head with false hope? Like you do when you're nice to him, teasing him with the -"

"-I've never noticed it before, but you are a pathetic excuse-"

"I don't want your opinion. I couldn't care less what you think of me," I shrugged, even though his insults and hostile attitude was opening up a new level of confrontation. I was tired of him opposing everything I did, tired of watching Duo look at him with those hungry violet eyes. "All I care about is Duo," I let the words hiss out of my mouth, watching Heero's reaction. There was none.

-end "Choice to See", part 6 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

MasamuneReforged '06  
send feedback to- Thanks!


	8. 7 Trust

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and 5x2, angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death? Characters doing some not so nice stuff to each other, some of which is violent in this chapter.  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to I am at this point clarifying the status of this story as deathfic or not.

IF you believe that the end of someone's existence is 'death', then no, this is not a deathfic.

IF you believe that the end of someone's physical life is 'death', then yes, this is a deathfic.

Last time I put this warning in.

Part 7 - Trust

Looking back on everything, I realize that there were six pivotal points that if only had been thoroughly understood, would have prevented later tragedy. I am filled with shame and frustration when I remember these times and wish with every fiber of my being that something else would have happened. I wish that I had seen the importance and had somehow been able to avert all the suffering. But these are burdens I never noticed were strapped to me until it was too late, and my feelings now are only natural misery and regret.

The first two events have already been accounted, though only one's importance and true consequences can be felt by the reader. The discovery of the map is one of those things that proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Had it not been found, it is possible that we could have stayed stranded in the Arctic mansion forever and all of us would have eventually become unhinged, cabin fever crazy. Most certainly if it had not been found, all of us would have perished.

But, the old map was found and can be considered the first step of our escape from the icy prison. However, it fooled us, made us too hopeful, too confident of our chances. Turning our focus to the snow blasted steppes, we missed the growing peril right underneath us. Since salvation did not come immediately, the map proved to be a major stress on Duo. A dancing, shimmering tease stoked his hope so it could be blown out.

Three of the other climactic actions will be recounted in time, but I am sure that the total effect and importance will escape the reader's grasp, exactly as it did mine, until... Well, it will come... Like the crucial event that took place in the kitchen, on the day Heero accidentally stumbled on the arsenal of guns, the others are cloaked in the guise of common day stuff. Just like the small black book Quatre found, major things may seem unimportant at first sight, like just another item in a just another room.

For a number of days, all the five of us did was search the endless rooms in the mansion for a more reliable guide to aid us in our escape. We simply couldn't trust our lives to some ancient scrap of paper, not against the unmerciful wild, no matter how much Duo insisted otherwise.

One day, while going through rooms that must have belonged to servants, for they were so cramped, ill lit and hastily made that none else could possibly have lived in them, Duo lost it again. He began to scream and snarl at the top of his voice about the "fucking damned ice" and Shinigami and the war.

This time though, none of us were struck quite the way we had been the first time. Quatre managed to get Duo under control in only a few minutes. We were growing numb to his mania, numb to everything. Each day seemed to blend and mesh with every other. The only notable difference came from a red curtain pattern in one room, to a towering mahogany closet in another, or the various items we would sort through. It was boring, monotonous work, but everyone else felt we needed to do it, so I didn't argue.

The black diary was found in one of the most cluttered rooms we searched. The occupant had been a man, an artist. He had been one of the first to live in this mansion. His room had been torn to shreds over the centuries, with everything of value stolen and the rest left in piles scattered about. The diary was in French, a language only Quatre knew how to read. I sat there in the room with him when he picked it up. He flipped through the pages, aquamarine eyes half-closed in lack of interest. He read a few random pages, then made to chuck it away, but did not. I watched him hold it in his hand for a second, and then finally drop it to his side. I assumed he wouldn't pick it up again.

- - - - - 

Quatre didn't read the diary for a good long while. He was busy with other problems. The lack of heat in the mansion made us all wear sweaters or coats constantly. And laboring in the basement, where the generator made it stiflingly hot only provided an evil contrast. Ranging from blue baby wraps to hulking overcoats, nearly every possible size and type of garb was at our disposal in the closets. But Quatre always wore long shirts that would cover far past every inch of his body. This little fact slipped right by me until the stretch of four days when the blonde only wore turtlenecks. On the third day, the sleeves happened to be so loose, that while Heero, Quatre and I were wasting away in the Hunt Room, they fell down to the skinny elbows, causing Heero to ask:

"What's that?"

"What?" Innocently, but without the cherub smile, Quatre answered.

"On your arms," Heero coughed. He had a cold, probably from his lack of sleep.

The hands quickly dropped out of sight, the cuffs going past the fingers. Quatre's face flinched and got even whiter, until it rivaled the blanket of snow outside, until it almost appeared a sick green in the awkward light.

A wide, wide smile popped up on the Winner heir's face, and he stuttered, "N, no. What are you talking about Heero?" Heero's eyes narrowed until I could barely see the dark blue iris. I knew the Perfect Soldier was not fooled. Quatre quickly excused himself and an ill silence came over both of us. Heero began went back to his work, but I asked just what had he seen.

"Bruises," He dryly answered.

What? I shook my head and returned to staring out the window. What did that mean? Bruises...

...from Trowa?

- - - - - 

Now I couldn't believe it for a long time, but five days later, it really hit me. I had come to accept the two pilots' relationship, even the rocky time they were going through. Relations with fellow warriors initially disgusted me. To one who caught himself stealing longer and hungrier looks at a boy with a long braid, it was ridiculous hypocrisy at best. Quatre and Trowa made such a perfect couple… for a while... But their recent fights had gotten worse and worse, with Quatre only increasing problems by fighting to ignore and look past their problem. Neither did anything. The gap grew and grew uglier, until it blew up in an inferno in the late night.

Core of black night, I woke up, bolting upright in bed. I was so thirsty. It was almost like someone had dropped a small fleck of slow-burning coal down the back of my throat. My one good eye adjusted to the darkness quickly. The hour escaped me, but as I threw the covers off and slipped into my night shoes, I thought it to be around the wee hours of the morning.

I ran to the bathroom, the faucet squeaking as I turned the water on. The rusty, aged pipes groaned in protest, but the ice-cold water flowed. I cupped my hands and drank greedily. The freezing liquid splashed my face, shocking the last dregs of sleep away. I took a moment, staring at my reflection in the mirror, which had a crack directly down the middle, a remarkably perfect line. I could only see out of my right eye, but my left still moved in perfect unison, as I looked myself over. My blind eye blinked back at me, as if everything were fine. My thirst temporarily quenched, I felt no desire to return to bed.

I took a walk around the mansion. Some lights were off, others on. I left everything as it was, sneaking like a thief through the halls. Flurries dusted the windows and the wind warned of a storm. The electricity generator controlled the night, everything regulated by its loud, persistent hum. My leg hurt, but I was too restless, too uneasy to care.

As normal, my tired thoughts turned to Duo. I was starting to wonder if there was any correlation between his panic attacks and his sporadic relationship with Heero. I didn't get too in-depth, as I passed a promenade looking over the main dining area, which ironically had been stripped of its large tables. I stepped into the promenade, but dropped low, barely peeking over the banisters as voices floated up from below.

"… can't you leave me alone for awhile," Trowa, with a bitter undertone to his question.

"Trowa..." A long whine, but backed with boundless passion and concern, Quatre. "You never want me-"

"Why can't you get it through your head?" The normally quiet clown spat. Quatre jerked into view, facing my direction. I ducked out of sight, but still caught Trowa's angry words, "You can't seem to understand when you're pissing me off."

"But Trowa!"

"Do you think I like having someone around who just pisses me off?" Peering over the top, I could see Trowa now. He was shirtless, his slightly tanned skin catching the light. He was probably in the middle of his religious sit-ups and push-ups ritual. A light sweat lingered on his skin.

Quatre began to speak, but the taller boy cut him off, stepping ominously forward, "Answer my fucking question!" An uncommon shout, I hardly knew it for Trowa's voice.

The soft Arab wrung his hands, looked at the floor. Trowa waited. His muscular back was drawn up, shoulders especially tense. A vein ran down the long neck. He looked larger than normal, fed fat on his own anger. I prayed they wouldn't see me.

"I, I know that," I hardly heard Quatre admit the hard fact, "I know that I annoy you sometimes…"

"So," Trowa's voice sounded flat, but I felt a sinister vibe there, "Would I want a pain in the ass near me all day long? Would I be happy with you being on me continually, like a leech?"

How could Quatre answer that? How could Trowa ask him that?

The blonde boy had no answer except for silence. I became aware of how loud the beat of my heart and my drawing breath was. Pained crystal blue grew bigger, threatened to spill over.

Quatre suddenly lashed out, making me jump, "You never want me around anymore! You-"

"You're right!" Trowa cut him off, yelling louder. "I don't want you around! Great!" He faked cheer; "You figured it out!"

"No. No, I'm not hearing this." Quatre backed up, but Trowa took one step to make up for Quatre's four. "This isn't right. Something's not right!"

"I don't talk to you anymore. I don't sleep with you anymore. I don't bend over backwards for you anymore. I don't respect you anymore." The strange cruelty grew, even as the voice dropped to a softer volume. "Yes. Something's wrong Quatre, something with us. I don't want to do any of those things anymore. Can you guess why?"

Tears rolled out, aquamarine shivered. "You don't love me anymore." Not his words, Quatre was only restating something he had heard, repeated it in a blank, dead voice like the one that had broken his heart with it.

The Latin youth didn't reply, turning in my direction. I ducked out of sight again, and heard Quatre say, "No! No Trowa, something _else_ is wrong! There, there's something wrong with this place, with this mansion! With all of us!"

"Oh please, not this shit ag-"

"No, no, no! Listen to me! There's something bad, evil. I _feel_ it Trowa! It's… sinister and- "

"Quatre," Trowa's voice fell softer, almost defeated. "I don't believe in spirits or weird feelings from people or places. You're just making excuses. Damnit. You expect me to believe bullshit like that? You disgust me sometimes... Don't you think you're capable of being wrong every now and then? Does everything have to be blamed on something else?"

I had heard of Quatre's ability, his power to sense things no one else could detect.

"Duo… Duo agrees with me. He thinks something's off in this place too," Quatre was pleading, praying for Trowa to believe. I wondered why this was such an important issue.

"_Duo_ is off. He's crazy from being cooped up here," Trowa wouldn't believe. He shook his head and asked, "Quatre, will you please leave me alone now? We've had this conversation before-" It hit me. This fight was just mirroring all the other arguments Quatre and Trowa got in. They could get at each other's throats over any little matter, and each small battle was a part of the growing war between them.

I looked up to see Trowa's arm grabbed by Quatre, powerful negative energy flowing out of the taller boy as the comparatively minuscule youth begged, "Please believe me." The blonde wanted more than Trowa's belief; he yearned for his love again. "Believe in me, in us." Quatre wanted the brunette's love so badly that I could feel it all the way up on the promenade, feel it grow and reach out desperately for Trowa. "I love you so much."

"Get away from me," Trowa's speech was hard, a warning. "Let go-"

Something flickered on Quatre's face, like a puzzled misunderstanding or inability to comprehend, "Trowa-"

"Let go!" With a shove, Trowa pulled his arm from Quatre's grasp and pushed the blonde away. Caught off balance, thrown by his lover, Quatre fell to the floor. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he looked up unbelievingly at Trowa.

Trowa turned away. Quatre picked himself up from the floor. Trembling, he choked out, "What's wrong with you Trowa?"

I saw the green eyes snap open, fists clench. Whipping around, Trowa suddenly lashed out with his long left arm, landing the savage blow square on Quatre's surprised face. A half grunt, half yelp escaped the rich blonde's lips as he fell back again. Red appeared on his white shirt, and he began to crawl away. Trowa stepped forward, snarling:

"_YOU_!" Fury garbled the Latin youth's words. He took towering steps towards the shaking Arab, scampering back, still on the floor. "Nothing's wrong with me! _YOU'RE_ the problem! You keep coming to me, even after I warn you to stay away. How can I make it any clearer," Quatre's back pressed up against a wall, he was trapped, "that I don't want you around?"

Sniveling something that missed my ear, Quatre babbled only for a second before letting out a shout. Trowa grabbed the poor, smaller boy at the collar and raised him by it. Their heads were level, eyes locked. Quatre's feet were a considerable distance above the wood surface and he struggled to catch a breath of air.

"I used to love you. I can't even remember why," Slowly punctuating each syllable, Trowa ground out the words. "I hate you when you're around me, like a stray dog begging."

"Did, did you just say that you d,d,don't always hate me?" Quatre struggled to get the air to ask, a bad move.

Trowa's muscles bulged even larger and he shook Quatre like a doll, banging his head against the wall, speckling blood over both of them. His free arm cocked itself. An animal-like cry passed through the Heavyarms' pilot's lips and he shook terribly. Quatre did not try to block. There was a sharp crack as Trowa's fist broke Quatre's nose. Immediately, the arm was pulled back, like a bowstring, and let fly again, and again. Trowa had grown to a million times the size of the blonde, hiding the boy from my view as he abused him. It seemed to go on forever, but I only drew a few breaths during the time. Nothing moved me an inch, not even Quatre's pleas. I was frozen.

Then the shaking stopped. Trowa reduced in size, leaned in close to the quivering boy he once tenderly loved, his words impossible to make out from my hiding spot. All I heard was Quatre sobbing and gasping for air. With a quick motion, Trowa let go, sending the Arab sprawling on the floor. He didn't look back at all or even collect his shirt. He just stomped out of the room, nearly ripping a door off its hinges.

I stayed deathly still. How long had I been watching? Why had I watched? Why hadn't I stopped them?

My teeth were clenched and my leg throbbed from sitting in the same position for so long, but I waited motionlessly. I barely peeked over the promenade's railing. I stayed like this while Quatre sat, fixed in his misery, blood and tears mixing on his face. I stayed still even when he got up, only to get a cloth to wash up his own blood from the floor. I stayed until he collapsed in a chair, crying sometimes, but always trembling, head to his chest and arms hugging his body as if to comfort all his woes.

- - - - - 

This next part I am going to relate as best I can. However, it may not be totally accurate and some of it is still muddled because… Well, what happened was this:

A few days after witnessing Trowa horribly rough up Quatre (Quatre insisted that he had hit his head while in the basement pantry. And, I decided, if he wouldn't stand up for himself, I wasn't about to either) we were searching rooms still, looking for a clue that would help us navigate to safety. Searching through a room on the ground floor, we stumbled on a liquor cabinet. It was filled with all sorts of different kinds of hard alcohol, but Duo grabbed out a big glass bottle of Smirnoff vodka and, against Quatre's advice, decided we had searched enough that day. It was time for some relaxation.

The five of us settled into the Hunt Room, Duo offering the bison at the entrance a swig. He wasn't in the mood for it. We set up a roaring fire and all of us, save Quatre, began to drink. We drank straight from the bottle, washing down the burning, acrid taste with various drinks from the kitchen. The powerful alcohol soon loosened us up and we started joking around, laughing and enjoying each other's company for the first time in as long as I could recall.

Quatre soon went off to sleep. All our restraint went right out with him and the bottle quickly began to disappear. Now, I had never been a big drinker, but one thing I remembered was that when you're drunk, you can get really, really horny. And with Duo wearing an almost skin tight, long sleeved shirt, unconsciously flaunting his lithe body as he moved and joked around, I got hotter and hungrier for him with every teasing motion, every swig of burning spirit. Taking my eyes off of him got harder and harder to do and as we got continually drunker. My thoughts turned to how I could quietly get him out of the room to a more private spot.

I don't know if Duo picked up the pheromones I was letting out, or if it was just by chance, but he said out of the blue, "Ya know, one thing's been driving me nuts iz that I haen't gotten any ass at all since we got here." Heero's and my jaws dropped simultaneously, but Duo went right on, saying, "I mean, I don't get fucked a lot, but jusht the option of going out to a bar or club or just cruising ish real nishe to haf."

Did he just say, 'I don't get fucked a lot' ? This was the first time the American devil had come straight out and admitted his homosexuality in front of all of us… Not like it had been a secret though.

I began to laugh, passing the vodka to Trowa; "You're a regular trashy hoe Maxwell!"

Duo shrugged, jumped up and snatched the bottle before Trowa could put it to his lips. After taking a long chug, he grinned loopily, "Jerkin off juss iss'n as satisfyin, even with thad dildo I found." He winked jokingly at me, but Heero sounded like he was wheezing to death. Duo put the Smirnoff to his mouth again, speech garbled, "Calms down there guys. You shoulda seen yer faces juss now."

He gave the round tip of the glass bottle an imitation blowjob, cramming all of the neck into his mouth. Laughing, smiling wide, he gave the bottle to Heero, who did not wipe off the drool.

Heero asked, "Do you have to be so crude?" The soldier, who had been relatively high-spirited all day, now sounded irritated, bothered. Both Duo and I knew what was getting him so riled up.

"Ey!" Jumping out of his chair, Duo yelled in mock anger. "A guy can' help hisself, an' you heard Ufei, 'I'm a shlutty hoe.' Hahaha, hic, right?" The braided boy had put down more alcohol than any of us and it was showing now. Duo dropped his chaser drink. Orange energy drink spilled on the carpet. Duo quickly bent down to pick it up, but didn't stand up very fast. Instead he fumbled with his glass, waving his ass around, which happened to be directly facing Heero.

Duo wasn't fooling anyone. Heero, shifting around uncomfortably, said in a somber, serious tone, "What are you doing Duo?"

"Ha! Really Eero, you that naïve?" Duo flashed another brilliant smile and went on, "I'm puttin' the moves on ya. You know, seducshun. I mean, why should I be complainin'm sbout bein' lonely when dere's three hansome young men igh'ere?" He looked around at all of us, then began to slide his hands up and down his body, tossing his wild hair around. Lowering his voice to a husky tone, he whispered, running his hands provocatively down his tight frame, "All it take isht a few moves."

With that Duo began to dance around, his braid whipping around crazily as Shinigami did his best imitation of strip club music, "Da dada, da da, da, oops." He tripped. "Da da da." I watched silently, taking the Smirnoff from Trowa and cringing down only a small sip before passing it back. I wasn't bothering to reach around Duo to pass it to Heero. Trowa took a chug and gave it back to me.

"Damni', you guys is a tough crowd," Duo complained, flashing a sour face at our lack of reaction. Well, just because I wasn't making it obvious didn't mean I didn't have a reaction. In fact, I was so hard I could have used my 'reaction' as a lethal weapon.

I grimaced when I saw the vodka in my hands again, its malicious effects beginning to stir hell in my guts. I didn't even drink, but passed the bottle to Trowa again. The mercenary took the same amount down each time, but had yet to say much all night. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time he had spoken to anyone, except, ironically, Quatre…

"Hn," Heero gave a disapproving grunt as Duo started to get bolder, gyrating his hips and doing all sorts of crazy things like sucking and licking his fingers erotically with his tongue. Sticking the pink organ far out of his mouth and leaving his hand in a glimmer. I laughed at Heero's reaction as Duo took a moment to catch his breath. The Wing pilot looked like a cartoon character, with his eyes nearly bugging out of his face, accented by the deep bags underneath them. He was breathing heavily. So was I.

"Whas rong Hee-chan? Not endoin' the sshow?" Duo had a crazy, devilish grin on. It was like he knew how much Heero really was enjoying it, but how cruel the swaying temptation directly in front of him was. The Japanese machine couldn't take his eyes away, even for a second. "Wufei'ss haffin imself a gran' lil time, ain't you Wu-man?"

I laughed mid swallow, the hand holding the Smirnoff bottle dropping in-between my knees. I tried to smile innocently. "What can I say?" Was my drunken reply.

Strands of loose brown hair were harassing Duo's face. Even after throwing his head back, some stuck, gripping on beads of sweat. "Oh Wu-man, Wu- man, Wu-man," The long haired American shook his head and half-danced, mostly staggered, over to me. "An' I always taut you were sush a good boy."

He dropped to his knees, taking the entire neck of the bottle, so close to my crotch, into his mouth with one deft movement. I didn't flinch; not even when Duo put a hand on each of my legs he was crouching between and squeezed. Duo took in the glass length with a considerable amount of moaning and guttural noises. His head slowly raised itself up off the bottle, tongue trailing out, leaving a wet glimmer on the clear glass, swimming amethyst eyes never leaving mine. When he reached the very nozzle of the bottle I lifted the bottom, pouring the maximum amount of alcohol into him. He swallowed once, twice, thrice, and only when clear liquid escaped his lips and dribbled down his chin did I let up.

It was hard for him to keep it down, I could tell from his slight gag. Wiping off his chin, still positioned on the floor in front of my chair the intoxicated beauty said to me, "Yer moore evil dan anyone coul' thuspect."

It was deathly silent in the room, and my mind was running wild with what I'd be doing to Duo right now if the others weren't there with us... But I didn't do anything, only maintained eye contact. Duo's purple eyes were glossy and dark violet from the gleaming lights in the room. He blinked at me once, twice, thrice, and then suddenly swung around and looked over at Trowa.

"Don' feel negleted, negleted, kneeglected!" He consoled the silent boy, "U've got tha best sheat in the housh, right up width the pole."

Duo tripped on his way over, but finally reached the tall lamp pole next to Trowa. He wrapped his hands around to start a pole dance. The manic joker jumped up. He didn't get far as his leg caught the arm of the chair and he was sent sprawling into the arms of Trowa, who barely reacted at all. I couldn't stop laughing. Heero looked peeved.

"Hahaha, oops, hic, hahahehe," Duo broke into a fit of laughter on Trowa's lap. "Guess I ha' a teeny bit mush," He let out a long, tired breath and sighed, "Damn, Towa, ya cumftable. I could shleep like thish righ' now." He was falling off a bit and put a hand on Trowa's left thigh for support and gasped. "Damn! What-" I looked over. Heero raised a questioning eyebrow. "That's?... !" Duo patted his hand a little lower on that spot on Trowa's upper leg and exclaimed, "Fuckin shit' Tro! Itz a monster!" The Heavyarms pilot blushed blood red in a heartbeat and made to shake Duo off, but the American wrapped his arms around the long neck and crooned, "You win! I'm goin' to your room tonight!"

I couldn't breathe, I was laughing so hard, not caring that my jealousy was stirring. I was too drunk for such negative emotions. Heero, however, had had enough. He stood up and began to leave, only barely muttering, "I'm done with this. I'm going up to-"

"Hey!" Duo yelled out suddenly, scrambling off Trowa's lap. "You're not goin' aneewear you." Duo raced over and without warning jumped on Heero's back, shouting happily, "Got you!"

"Duo get off me, I'm going to bed," Heero's mechanical tone was still holding up strong.

Duo clung on for dear life, shaking his head like an uncooperative toddler and protesting, "No! No!" As it became clear that Heero was not going to throw the Deathscythe pilot off, the American calmed down, laying his head onto Heero's right shoulder and softly demanded, "Tae me with you."

I was silent and still, like I had suddenly vanished. Trowa was still sipping down hard alcohol.

"Duo… I-" The Wing pilot was going to put up a front of resistance.

But we all knew it was going to fail, especially Duo. He simply squeezed around Heero's chest and murmured again, "Please?"

Finally, heaving a defeated sigh, Heero shifted to adjust the load, then carried Duo out of the room. Minutes passed, Trowa drinking silently. I refused the bottle whenever he tried to give it to me, and after awhile he just held on to it. I was getting queasy, but I wanted to make conversation so I asked:

"Could I get a bit?" He passed it over. I asked, "Are you all right? You've been silent all day."

He shrugged, green eyes scanning my face for a second. He shrugged again, "I'm OK."

Trowa bit his lip. Something was bothering him. I let the minutes slide by, knowing the only way Trowa would open up to me was on his own volition. I sat as still as possible, staring into the fireplace. It was like my stirring would scare the Heavyarms pilot away.

"Wufei," He finally began. I turned to him, smiling reassuringly. "Have you been… Have you ever…" ……

"What is it?" I asked.

"Forget it. It's stupid."

"No. You were going to ask me something," I pressed. "Just spit it out. No such thing as a stupid question."

Trowa looked over his shoulder, paranoid someone, I have no idea who, was listening in. He leaned forward, slightly glazed over emerald eyes unsure. He whispered, "Have you had any weird dreams?" I blinked at him.

It took me a second to realize he was not going to elaborate on the inquiry, but was still expecting a response. Weird dreams? Where does one draw the line between a normal dream and a weird one? Funnily enough, now that he mentioned it, I could not remember a single dream I had had the entire time we had been isolated in the mansion. Even before that I didn't dream often, and always tried to forget them anyhow.

"No," I answered simply. "Why?"

"It… it's not real, right? No, of course not. But…" Trowa seemed to be having an extra hard time speaking today. I could not tell if it was from the alcohol or insecurity or… "It's just a dream, right? It doesn't mean anything… not about me… … right?"

I nodded, "A dream is just a dream. Even with all the technology and science we have, we still don't know what they mean."

Finding myself wanting to launch a different path of inquiry, I tried to form the best way to address the issue. There was only one thing that I could imagine would be bothering the Heavyarms pilot. A direct question about him and Quatre wouldn't work, would it? Trowa still seemed lost in thought, absentmindedly drinking from the vodka container.

"But…" He paused again, not even looking at me, not even focusing his eyes. "…But… it's so _real_… And I'm back there… L3 all over again… Every last detail… I'd forgotten…

Trowa paused and remembered. Then he continued:

"But why now? … … How do I get back? I don't want to remember but…" Trowa stopped, his ramble sliding off into oblivion. I had no clue what he was trying to get at. His awkwardness was starting to unnerve me. I thought about Quatre's words to him:

'Something's not right.' 'There's something bad, evil.'

"Quatre says he's been feeling, hearing things, strange things," Trowa suddenly seemed to get a grip on his words. He looked at me, eyes still awash in the ocean of wonder. "Human, almost. Not just in his dreams, but when he's awake too. He told me it was like someone yelling out, begging to be found, but another, something blocking… I don't know… I wonder if he's... Have you heard anything like that?"

"No," I lied, anything but eager to recount the ghostly child's voice that had mysteriously blinded my eye on the Artic steppe. "Nothing like that." Then I decided to ask him, "Have you heard voices in your dreams or anything like that?"

"Not voices..." Trowa shook his head, his hair falling so it was impossible for me to see his face with my one dead eye. I turned, giving the healthy one a better view, but his hair fell like a veil over his features. "But when I dream…" His voice trailed off again. "I was young… I trusted so easily… ... They… …I tried but… they… I forgot it all… All of it… It should be gone…"

"Now they're back… still alive… …still L3… but… …but now… …I'm them… …I… I do it… … … and Quatre…"

Trowa left it at that, lips sometimes moving, but no more decipherable sound escaping. I lost hope. Whatever he had meant to say was not something he was comfortable talking about with me. I sipped and thought for a moment. I waited a minute, but then decided I had to talk to him about something, even though I knew he would be hesitant and it wouldn't be the type of conversation the two of us would normally have:

"Things have been hard for you lately," I started. Trowa blinked at me with his visible eye. I sensed his rising discomfort, but went on, knowing I would get a reaction out of him only if I got more specific, only if I made him more uncomfortable. "It's hard, fighting with a loved one."

"It happens," He flatly replied, reaching for the vodka instead of shrugging, holding his blank tone.

"When I was younger… Well, where I grew up it was custom to arrange marriages for certain young people. I had to marry a girl from my colony and it-." I paused for a second. What the hell was I saying? "It really wasn't easy. For a while it was as if I was cursed, eternally stuck with this person even if I didn't want to be. It made me so angry."

"But that's different," Trowa answered. "You had no choice. I should be able to get away sometimes. It gets, almost scary, like he has a kind of control over me." I hadn't gotten a chance to tell the main point of my story, but I was fast forgetting it and decided to just let the Latin performer continue. "I just want to have some control of the relationship I'm in. It's a two sided deal."

"Quatre doesn't want it to end," I said. "So it's going to be up to you to break it off. You have to take a solid stand. If it's a two sided arrangement, then one person has the power to shut it off."

Trowa shook his head at my advice and sadly sighed, "But I'm also not so sure if I want to end it. I still-"

"Don't expect anything to happen if you can't get your thoughts straight first," I advised, berating his silly, wishy-washiness. I thought better of him. "You're obviously not happy with how things are between you and Quatre. If you can't make up your mind, don't put it past Quatre to try to make it up for you."

"Quatre is just too naïve, pestering sometimes," Trowa spoke in a far off voice, finally meeting my eyes and keeping eye contact for more than a split second. "He's too soft and kind. It just makes me feel like less of a man when-"

The silent clown looked away and stopped, only to turn back and glare angrily, as if he were mad at me for letting out his true thoughts. I stood up, tipsy and tired. I didn't want Trowa's grief towards me. He was angry with Quatre, not I.

"It's rough since we're stuck here together," I forlornly said. "Just don't let him make you think whatever he wants. Stand up for what you feel, even if that means being rough, being straightforward with him. Goodnight."

I left him with the little bit of vodka that was left at the dregs of the container. The hallways were dark and I groped around in them like a blind man. Only when I was near the bathroom did I remember that Quatre had mentioned to me that he wanted to talk to Trowa before he went to bed. I thought about going back down to one of them, but I don't think I did. At least I can't remember if I did or not. The rest of the night was wiped from my mind when I woke up in a strange room in the morning.

- - - - - 

I woke the next morning with a terrible headache and no idea where I was. Cursing and vowing to never drink again, I looked around the foreign, lavishly decorated room before identifying it as one a few doors down from my own. I lay on the bed for a while, feeling too much like crap to venture movement. Behind the throbbing pain in my skull I felt something, a memory or an important piece of information trying to push itself up to the point of remembrance. However, I shrugged it off as another thing came rushing sharply to my attention. I sprinted to the bathroom to relieve it.

I opened the bathroom door just at the time Trowa reached out to do the same from the inside. I blinked at him in surprise. He looked absolutely terrible! His amber brown hair fell down so wildly that I could only see a corner of one emerald eye. His face was a cross of pale white and nauseous green. From all around him, an aura of unease and greater, deeper, fear and loathing emanated. Rather than greet him good morning, I was moved to ask:

"What's wrong?"

No answer. Trowa tilted his head, just a bit, to get a decent view from under the mess of brown hair. His lips cracked as he opened them.

In a voice so different and aghast, that I never knew it could come from his mouth, he asked, "Where's Quatre?"

I told him I had no clue, and repeated my inquiry. Something was terribly wrong. A hand covered Trowa's face, his head falling as the long fingers clutched at his own skin, pinching the blood vessels and giving him some color. The Heavyarms pilot brushed past me and, almost to himself, croaked, "I think I've done something terrible."

I watched him walk slowly down the hall toward Quatre's room, formerly their room. I turned and went into my room, throwing on some fresh clothing. My head was in a complete fog. It was like the brain was carrying something so heavy it could hardly function because of it. I sort of wondered what the red stuff had been discoloring Trowa's shirt... probably the fruit juice he had taken with the vodka last night. Just a little spill. I wondered what Quatre had made for breakfast.

The scene that greeted me when I reached the kitchen sticks in my mind forever, as if the dawn light pressing through the window burned it into memory. Duo was sitting, silent and still, staring at a wall. Heero was dressed in the same thing he'd worn yesterday, a shirt with a nasty brown stain that ran down the right side. When he turned to me, I turned away. I looked over at Duo again, vividly recalling how the two had left together… Envy began to simmer in my bowels.

The dumbwaiter door was ajar, though I didn't think anything of it. Trowa stood like a statue, his hair pushed away so that both eyes were uncovered, as if he too could hardly believe what he saw, yet needed to clearly see, the horror standing in front of him.

Quatre stood at the very middle of everything. But God, it hardly looked like Quatre at all. His face was mutilated, a scarred red terror. His bangs were stained with blood. His neck was bruising, ugly black and blues everywhere. His lip was completely busted open, curling out sickeningly, drying, dying skin peeling away. His cheeks were puffy and swollen. I could hardly see his eyes; they were swollen shut. But tears still poured out, down the twisted, pitiful countenance. I couldn't think. I just looked back and forth between Quatre and Trowa.

"No… no…my God," Trowa's voice was small, scared. He shook like a leaf in the wind, trying to shake off the wrathful feelings that must have wracked his soul. "Quatre. Quatre. Oh God-, Quatre I'm so sorry."

Trowa took a step forward, but Quatre's sudden words made him take it back, "I'll kill you if you come near me."

Trowa started to speak, but had no words. What could he say in the face of all this? Quatre though, Quatre was solid, bitter, iron forged in hate. Hate coated his azure eyes as Trowa tried again to approach him. The dark emotions were thrown like daggers at Trowa's unmarred face, his spotless neck, his guilty, trembling hands.

"If you don't stay away, I'll have no regrets when I kill you," And as Quatre said this, he flipped up the end of his sweater to reveal the glimmering end of a pistol.

-end "Trust" Part 6 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

...gosh this part really makes me want to write some side-stories from the other pilot's POVs... not sure if I'll ever get to them though, but describing Trowa's dreams, the aftermath of the night between Heero and Duo and other incidents from Quatre's POV really interest me... I just don't have the time...


	9. 8 Mephisto

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and 5x2, angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death?(see chapter 6 and 7 notes)  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to MasamuneEHShotmail

Part 8- Mephisto

Duo took on a strange attitude towards me. It was like he was paying extra attention to me, watching me longer than he should, speaking to me more than normal. I liked it at first, but there was something sketchy about it. His friendly ways cheapened into fakeness, like he was trying to stay close to me just to keep an eye on me. He smiled broadly at me when everyone was around, chattering my head off the way he used to Heero's. Then, in private, it would be a combination of constant teasing, rubbing against my leg like a cat or simply stretching out his beautiful form in front of me, and bizarre conversations. He asked me about some of the strangest things in the world. I tried to make conversation, if only to keep him around me for a short while longer. I felt as if it was physically impossible to stop staring at him, like my eyes were connected to him by a wire. Of course, I could still only see out of one of my eyes… but you get my point.

I kissed him one night, when we were alone in the library. The American's favorite spot was the big red lounge chair in the dusty library. I had gone in to see how he was feeling, and the damn tease had flirted with me so intensely that I was almost certain he had finally chosen me over Yuy. Duo went on about how nice I had been to him, how happy it made him, how much he wanted me... As a friend? Or as more?

"You're not like the others."

"I like that proud way you carry yourself, but without being arrogant like someone else I know." "Hey, have you heard the one about…"

"Hahaha! Stop it! You crack me up."

"You work out every day? It shows."

"Read this line here. It's all right, come a little closer."

I wasn't sure. All I knew were my feelings for him, how I wanted to run my fingers over his creamy white flesh, through his thick, long hair. I wanted him so badly it almost made me scared. In a reckless moment, I wanted him so much, that I didn't care if I could only have him for an instant. I leaned into him, opening my mouth to crash into his as he went to speak, surprised.

The taste of warm flesh, the slight moisture on his lips made me hungrier. His eyes were darting around the room, but mine were fastened to his. I drew in a breath, and his aroma consumed me. I sensed a strange, intense power running up and down him, even though his arms were slack at his sides. I made to wrap an arm around him, to pull him closer to me. But he broke the kiss, moving away. Within a minute, he excused himself.

We never talked about it. I mentally kicked myself for my stupidity. I knew I had made a mistake. But I told myself that there was no point in doubting myself. I didn't try to hide my real feelings for him. I wasn't like Heero. I wasn't playing any games. Nonetheless, Duo was taken aback by my blunt nature, and we didn't speak much the following day.

- - - - - 

That was a special day; one everyone had looked forward to for a long time. All the days since the map had fallen out of the book in the library had been spent in search for some sort of guide to make sense of it. We finally managed to dig up something worthwhile. We found a notebook in an upstairs room. The five of us spread out, each taking a different side of the room and sorted through what didn't crumble in our hands. Only ten minutes into it, Trowa announced that he had found something.

It was a travel log, recently written. By recently, I mean it was approximately a decade or so before our arrival at the mansion. Duo began jumping in celebration, hugging Heero and I, as Trowa read a short section aloud. The writer had recorded how he and a group of men had come upon an Eskimo settlement out in the wilderness, then how they had reached the mansion. All we had to do was go backwards on the path they had traveled, and we would find help.

"This journal has a lot more written in it," Trowa commented casually.

To this I said, "We've been reading through crap for weeks on end. We have what we need."

There! Subject closed, search finished. This was the beginning of the end, live happily ever after.

- - - - - 

The only reason that humans discover so much is because they are curious. That's not always a good thing; it can lead to trouble. If you dig too deep you could end up buried under a landslide created by your own prying hands. Some things shouldn't be looked into so deeply.

Later that night, we were again gathered in the Hunt Room. I was playing another game of chess with Quatre. Over the course of time I had grown bored of always playing the Sandrock pilot. But recently he had changed his style of playing. His solid defense was abandoned for a much more aggressive method. The Arab never passed up a piece-for-a-piece exchange, anything to draw blood. I found myself losing pieces early in the game. So did he, and it ultimately worked to my advantage. He was very good with his knights; they seemed to guard against every strategy I would make. The horses always seemed to be in position to befuddle any offensive I made. Quatre lost them in an exchange (I gladly gave up my two knights for his) After I countered his initial lunge, I would wipe him out.

But it was getting boring again, each game so much like the last. I was soon lost to outside thoughts, scattering my concentration. Suddenly my queen was dead, and I began to focus more. I was just beginning a grand counterattack when Duo came into the room. I didn't know he had left.

"We need to talk about something," Shinigami's voice was serious, soft. Everyone looked towards him, none of us speaking. "This." Duo tossed the journal we had discovered at Trowa, who caught it. "Did you read the rest of it?"

Trowa shook his head, eyes darting to all of us (except for Quatre) like he was afraid he'd done something wrong. He, again, shook his head and remained quiet.

"Why would we want to read any more of it?" I asked, pissed at the interruption and the fact that I was losing to Quatre because of my overconfidence. "We have directions to a safe area an-"

"I was just curious, sorta bored, so I took a look at it," Duo was speaking strangely. He almost sounded like Heero, so unfeeling and calm. "It's by a vagrant. He came to this house some years ago, along with a large group, an expedition led by his cousin." This much Trowa had told us, having read it on the first page or two. What was Duo working at?

"You find it strange that anyone would come intentionally all the way out here," Heero ventured a guess. I thought he was talking out of his ass, but the Japanese soldier must have known Duo's thought process, because the braided pilot nodded. "That is strange," Heero agreed.

"I read the first part of the log before I knew it was useful to us," Trowa spoke slowly, trying to remember. "It said they came here because the writer's cousin heard a story from a man at a bar."

"Mephisto," Duo spoke the foreign word with heavy emphasis. It went right over my head. "A person only referring to himself as Mephisto asked some seedy thugs, ex-mercenaries and court-martialed soldiers to go out here in the Arctic and do a little job for him."

"It did mention about bringing some supplies here… I skipped around a lot…so…" Trowa looked at all of us (but not at Quatre), mostly at Duo, as if he were suspicious that we were trying to corner him in a trap.

There was something behind Duo, a force springing him into action. It made his gestures short and quick, rushed his speech. The light amethyst eyes were as tranquil and calm as I had ever seen them, but I could hear the gears in his head spinning, his thoughts coming almost dizzyingly fast. He took his long braid in his hand, looking at it as he sighed.

"Mephisto approached these men with an offer, a deal he himself had taken up many years before," Taking the tone of a storyteller about to recite a long tale, Duo sat down in a seat near Quatre. "Not much is known about who he was, but the writer of the log described him as an old man with too many years on his back. Mephisto told the men that if they performed certain tasks, they would earn themselves a handsome reward."

"Duo, is this going to lead to a point?" Quatre broke in suddenly. I was glad. This sounded like some dumb legend, a stupid myth. It was only going to poison our minds. "You're not just making this up?"

"This is important. Trust me Quatre!" Such a hard sound in the braided youth's tone, he must have felt very strongly about this. I wondered where Duo was getting this crap from? Where was the source? As Quatre and Duo argued for a minute, I got up and took the black journal from where Trowa had placed it. Opening it, I began to read.

"It's all in that book!" Duo yelled, cracking a wooden table with a pounding fist. He'd finally won over Quatre, silence filling the room. I began to read. The writing was big and spaced out; I scanned rapidly through pages.

"So," Duo smoothed out the wrinkles in his shirt, dropping his harsh tone, "This Mephisto dude said that if they completed certain repairs on the house here, they would be rewarded. Somehow he managed to convince the man that would lead the expedition, but he didn't tell them some things."

"The book is mostly about what happened after the expedition reached this mansion," Duo cut to the chase, just as I flipped through some boring, detailed pages and reached a passage that interested me. "They completed repairs, stocked up supplies. But, but then there was a problem. Nobody could find the great treasure they'd been promised, and the band of crooks wasn't about to leave empty handed."

"Basically they got conned into doing a job by this Mephisto fellow?" Quatre said. Duo shook his head. "But we've never seen anything very valuable here. This sounds like a method someone made up so this mansion wouldn't fall into complete disrepair. Why anyone would want to-"

"Dissent grew among the criminals," Duo started up right where he had left off. He was filled with energy, as if the best was yet to come. I continued to read. The writing in the journal was disjointed, scatterbrained. "Fights broke out. People got cabin fever. A faction desired mutiny and escape."

"That's what happens to weak minded criminals," I grunted from my corner. Then a thought hit me; I looked up from the book. Duo met my gaze. I licked my lips, asked, "Duo, you keep calling them criminals. Why are they criminals? It doesn't say anything like that in the book."

"It's one of the entries past halfway," Duo calmly replied. He smiled as he dropped the bomb; "The group kidnapped a bunch of people and brought them here."

Heero asked what all of us were thinking, "Why go to all the trouble, bringing hostages out here?"

"Sacrifices," Duo mouthed the word slowly, his grin stuck on tight. Was he getting a kick out of this? "Along with repair equipment and foodstuffs, they were supposed to bring sacrifices with them." A clammer rose up, everyone tried to speak at once. Duo shouted over all of us, "Mephisto ordered them to bring people as sacrifices!" Everyone stopped speaking, even Duo. An eerie silence came down over our heads. Something in the electricity generator popped, making a loud rattle.

"What for?" Trowa asked. Now he was sneaking glances at Quatre, to see how the estranged Sandrock pilot was reacting. I wondered why the tall acrobat would act like this every now and then. Most of the time Trowa and Quatre didn't speak to each other, wouldn't even look at each other. However, other times it appeared that Trowa would try to mend the gap, rebuild the bridge. Quatre still carried a gun on him at all times.

"I don't know," Duo shrugged, still retaining his air of confidence. "I'm guessing it was a sacrifice for the ghoul in the mansion. Mephist-"

"Wait! Stop right there," I waved my arms in the air, halting everything. I looked at Duo with a skeptical glare. "What are you talking about? Some stupid hocus-pocus-"

"It's not stupid!" Both Duo and Quatre shouted at me at the same time. I backed down, smacking the pages of the journal as Duo grumbled, "You just don't know."

Heero looked asleep. His head arched strangely against the high back of his chair and his eyes were shut. The exhausted Wing pilot spoke softly, "Duo, what else does it say about these hostages?"

"There were a bunch of them," Duo licked his lips. I turned another page. "A son and father, a couple and their two boys, a teenage girl, another young boy and his father and a little girl." The list was longer than anyone expected; this had been a serious incident. "Seems the closer relation between people the bigger reward they'd get."

"Is that for sure, or are you just-" Heero began to ask a question, but Duo stamped it out with his voice.

"No!" The American sounded perturbed, tense and anxious. He fiddled with his long brown braid. I felt he wanted to finish this up in a hurry. "The writer just wasn't sure if they'd get a bigger reward or not, but I think it's the reason why they chose victims that way."

"You take what this one man writes as if it's the undeniable truth," I shut the book partly, just enough to make eye contact with Duo. He was not pleased with my interruption. His foot was tapping on the floor. I noticed that Heero nodded in agreement with me. Or perhaps he was falling asleep. "I don't know if that's a very reliable source."

Duo didn't answer. I knew why. Maxwell had failed to mention a critical aspect of the journal. Although the writing was not incredible, it was literate and had a normal flow and tone… for part of the book… But, as I had found from flipping through a few pages, a huge change came over the writer. The penmarks became more scrawled, hastily written, smaller. Question marks and exclamation points towered over words, pages were torn out. The author seemed to deteriorate on paper. As the pages rolled on and on the sentences would get choppier by the line, words were crossed out everywhere... And the things he wrote about...

I read a passage out loud, " 'Mesa's been looking for the cellar all day. I don't think he'll come out of the basement. The furnace swallows people.' " I stopped, looking around to gage the reactions. Only Duo didn't look confused. He looked scared. " 'Arty's been so strange, but he still hasn't found it yet. Half of the NahYo's are mutinous. They want to leave, go back to their turf in the Colonies. I don't understand. Why won't it let us go? We're being turned against each other by it. I think Edgar enjoys watching us fight. He's with the Devil. I saw him crawling on the graves in the middle of the night last night. His eyes glowed yellow, I thought he had a tail. How'd he get outside with Marco and C-Up guarding the door? Home is so far. We never---' "

The writing became illegible. I was done anyway. Nobody spoke. Below us the generator clattered with a rumble, but it soon softened to a normal hum. Duo was looking straight at me, the look of a sore loser. He had ceased fidgeting. Trowa looked exactly as he had all evening, miserable. A puzzled look creased Quatre's brow. He was hunched over, thoughts running around inside. Heero was looking up at the ceiling. What was his problem anyway?

"This man sounds insane to me," I got Heero to look over in my direction as I spoke. Duo let out a sound, but no words. He wanted to speak. "How you can take anything in this book seriously is beyond me."

Heero's eyes broke the wait as Duo saw that the Wing pilot and all of us were looking for a response from the him. Duo said, "I think this man was driven insane by whatever demon lives in this house." Was he serious? Heero rolled his eyes, but they still came to rest on Duo, making him uncomfortable, pressured to speak. "He was sane in the earlier parts of the diary."

"Simple." Heero got up from his chair. The Wing pilot's shoulders were hunched over, his feet stiffly sliding over the wood floor, cobalt eyes locked on Duo. "The man went insane just about the same time he started rambling in his diary about goblins and demons. Disregard what he says when you reach the passage about yellow-eyed devils leaping over tombstones. Now, since this has wasted enough time, I think, I'm going to bed."

I chuckled. Heero was funny when he was exhausted and bitterly sarcastic. 

"Heero!" Duo, I guess, was not amused. He snapped so loudly that Heero spun around like a top to face him, the quickest I'd seen him move all day. "You think I'm fucking joking about this?"

"It shouldn't be disregarded totally," Quatre was much calmer than both, and the peacemaker in him intervened as Heero's face turned quite red. "I think there might be some worth in seeing what the writer had to say about all of this." I glared at Quatre fiercely, but he absorbed the dark glower without even flinching or pausing. "Those that came here before us might have been able to uncover something that we've been ignorant to this whole time."

"Or they might lead us astray," Heero snorted.

"Look," I was going to speak, but Duo beat me to the punch. "There's still one important thing we can ALL agree about. Just, just drop the ghost issue for a second! You don't want to believe it? Fine! The important things is that there's still people being held hostage in this mansion!"

I could hardly believe my ears. I was sure Duo was going to discuss our plans to leave the mansion. This was unexpected. I decided to stay quiet and see where this led. However, everyone else decided similarly, and a hush fell over us. Heero eventually shrugged, "What do you want to do about it?"

"Rescue them!" Duo yelled, balling his fists up. He did that every time he got angry, as if he could pummel the world with his frustration. "Jesus! Have you all gone insane? It says there's still peo-"

"If by 'it', you mean this journal," I cut in, watching Duo's wrath wheel around on me, violet bearing down at me like chariots. "We can't be sure whether or not they're still alive. This was written quite awhile ago."

"Fucking doubting Thomas Wufei," Duo grated out the words through clenched teeth. "All you've ever done since we've gotten here is doubt every single thing that's happened. 'The map is too old.' 'The generator makes strange noises.' 'We can't handle the Arctic weather.' I'm sick of your excuses!"

"Duo," Quatre's voice was soft, but dry and emotionless, "it won't help if you just get angry."

"It won't help those people, suffering in the dungeons of this place, if all of you keep sitting around here like the worst cold hearted bastards in existence!" Duo was waving his arms again; he should have been an air traffic controller. "All of you, even you Quatre, something's changed in all of you! I don't know if it's from being stuck in this cage for so long, but you've all lost your humanity to this place."

"So you're saying we should try to help these prisoners?" I asked, hoping my sarcasm would show.

"Of course!" Duo thrust his left arm at me as if to pierce me with a sword. "Fucking Christ! Where are the 'courageous' men I fought with not so long ago? Don't any of you remember the heat of battle? The rush of excitement despite the sleepless nights and nightmares? Have you forgotten what it means to help others?"

The conversation dragged on for two full hours. Duo yelled and gestured and stamped his foot, but even after breaking down and then declaring himself the only sane one among us, he refused to quit until each and every last one of us agreed to a full search of the mansion.

Thus we wasted another three days.

- - - - - 

I awoke to darkness everyday. The generator was constantly humming, steadily louder every day, to combat the frigid climate. Trowa said it was getting colder. However, I could not tell the difference between subzero and fifteen or twenty degrees below subzero.

It was decided that Heero, Trowa and Duo would go scout out the village. Quatre bitterly agreed that some of us dying in a sudden blizzard was better than all of us. I had very little desire to go, I'd grown comfortable in the mansion. The only thing echoing in the back of my mind was that I wanted to keep an eye on Duo.

He had been looking slightly better since the travel log had been unearthed, but looks can be deceiving. He certainly had lots of energy. Daily, hourly, he led us about the dark mansion, swinging a flashlight and casting shadows with his arms while he speculated about all the secrets that nobody would ever find. One would think he were leading us on a grand treasure hunt. My heart was not in it. I had zero faith in any of these people being alive after all these years, if they'd even existed in the first place...

Duo would crawl on his hands and knees, slinking through crawlspaces and, against Heero's orders, scaling a rope into the dumbwaiter shaft. He was Sherlock Holmes, loudly scrutinizing every little mark and niche in the walls, feeling for trapdoors in the ground. But, while the Deathscythe pilot was doing a great job of handling the search, he seemed incapable of accepting that we might never find the "sacrifices". He even openly cried one night, banging his fists against a hidden door that had turned out to be a half finished bathroom. More and more I began to feel that everytime he cracked a silly joke, put on a smirking grin or tried to raise our spirits he was burying a part of himself from view, hoping that if he kept on pretending he'd become the person he was pretending to be, a person without any problems.

"You'll keep looking for them, won't you?" I walked around a corner to see a very puffy black trenchcoat with one arm on Quatre's shoulders. Squinting under the two hoods and a baseball cap, I could see amethyst eyes glinting out pleadingly.

"Leaving already?" I asked casually, as if he were going across the street for something at the A&P... Gods, I hadn't been to a store or any earthly place in so long... "Where are Trowa and Heero?"

"They're just securing the map and the diary so they don't get wet and ruined," Duo rattled off an answer and turned away. I watched him go to the front hallway and put on a pair of snowshoes. They looked like gigantic tennis rackets with boots in the middle.

- - - - - 

Quatre and I were alone for several hours. It took me about half that time to realize that he was the one I was least close to. I felt a sort of unspoken friendship with Trowa, and even some kind of bond with Heero, who I constantly feuded with. But after three hours of talking with Quatre I realized I didn't know him very well, and that if we weren't stuck alone together I'd probably never want to get to know him...

He was simply not the type of person I would normally get along with. My first impression of him had been that he was too soft and that he might get someone killed on the battlefield because of it. But I quickly saw that he had a gift for strategy and a very level head, when he wasn't so flustered by his feelings. He also doubted himself too much.

He had been reading the travel log for some time. I believe he intended to finish the entire book in one sitting. For lack of anything better to do, I made chitchat with him.

"Weren't you going to keep looking, for Duo?" I asked casually, remembering back.

I expected him to ask me what I was referring to. We'd been spending a hefty share of our time searching for something or another over the past… weeks, months?

"I was hoping to find more about that in this book," Quatre said immediately, not blinking away from the smooth pages. "But Arty, I mean, the leader of this expedition took all these people away to a part of the mansion without telling any of the men where. He kept a lot of things from his friends, about what was going on."

"Don't you think a bunch of scum would probably just rape the women and leave the rest for dead?" I asked, speculating out of sheer boredom. "Or do you think they were all left alive?"

"I have no, actually," I saw a flash in Quatre's eyes for a brief moment, but he still kept them glued to the words. "Actually I don't think they're dead. I just get that feeling."

"How do you figure that?" I wondered aloud. "From what I read, that diary was written by a very ill person, very mentally ill. I could hardly read some of the entries, and none of them made any logical sense."

Like so much here, I doubted everything in the ancient mansion. Time has a way of destroying and warping what once was true. Here time hung heavy from the beams in the ceiling and drifted off the tundra as it had for millions of years, piling on top of itself, further burying the past underneath.

"Ever since we arrived here I thought I felt something strange," Quatre finally looked away from the travel log. His azure eyes had a dreamy, distant glaze. "It seemed so natural and inconspicuous that I thought it was just my being unsettled from the crash. But some sort of thing..." Here, Quatre shivered, "...it began to sink into my bones, deep. This aura filled everything. This entire place seems so forgotten and neglected, but so painstakingly crafted and decadent that the..."

He drifted off. I shifted in my chair uncomfortably. I glanced around into the dark shadows gathering in the corners and silently agreed that the setting had an almost unreal characteristic. The wind had died down for almost a solid week. When it was quiet here, it was like we were frozen in a deathly smothering silence. 

The daydreaming blonde snapped out of it. He glanced at me from under his bangs as if he was surprised I was still here. "Never mind," He shook it off, shook me off. "A few years ago I went to a funeral for a relative on L3. It was right after the gang warfare had reached its highest peak and some of the cities were almost totally abandoned. The people left were almost the same as the dead, so it felt like everyone was already dead. No hope, only cruelty and animal instinct left. It was so sad."

He trailed off, lost in a memory.

I don't know why I asked it, "Are you going to make up with Trowa?"

Quatre's vacant gaze turned to one of shock. A blush came to his cheeks but quickly faded. His eyes narrowed at me and the color drained out of his face. Blue and white, like thick ice.

"How does that concern you?" I could tell the Sandrock strategist was holding back, being civil. Why couldn't he ever just be honest with me? He added a stinging remark, "Are _you_ giving up on Duo?" I hadn't expected that. He was getting more cold-blooded than I'd ever seen him before.

I ignored that comment and replied sincerely, "If we do get out of here, I don't want any strained relations between us pilots. Our lives are constantly in each other's hands. I just don't want it to affect the mission." Quatre was still glaring, and I realized he could put up as thick of a mask on himself as Trowa or Heero or Duo, if he put his mind to it. "Also," I decided to try to change my approach, "It's uncomfortable to see you both acting like this."

"He's so cold… calculating but always acting on instinct and feeling," Quatre gulped on the last word. He put the travel log aside. "But he's still like that even when not in battle. I thought I could get through to him. I saw something incredible inside him."

Wow. Give him a little nudge and Quatre would totally pour his soul out to you. The wealthy warrior put a brave smile on his cherub face as he continued, "But he didn't let me in. He locked me out with his shield. Maybe he realized he didn't love me. But-"

Quatre's face fell ashen. The pale sickness was still present, but the callous had worn out. Through chapped lips he choked on his speech, "It's not his fault our love faded. Maybe – I-" Doubts consumed him. I held my breath, as if the slightest inhalation would suck the wet trail of sadness down his face. "Maybe I wasn't the right person for him."

The great wooden structure creaked and groaned under a strong blast of wind. I felt I needed to say something, "So it won't alter your relationship with him or affect you in battle any way?"

"Everyone's been affected," Quatre mumbled.

I wasn't going to ask him what he meant by that. The blonde was so intelligent, well schooled and naturally street smart. But he could not explain his train of thought to save his life. He was too filled with concerns and worries to hone his skills properly. I bit my lip and stared at the floor. It squeaked as Quatre stood up suddenly.

My eyes met his. Horror dwelt there.

"What's wrong?"

"I-" He gasped for air. He clutched his chest but ran past me towards some unknown beacon.

"Where are you going?" I yelled after him, rising as well. But Quatre didn't get far. He seemed to stagger, then sprint to one of the doors in the library. He threw it open. The elements howled outside, but unblocked sunlight drifted in with windswept snowflakes. Quatre stood in the open doorway for a moment, looking down the hall towards the kitchen, then rushed to another across the room.

This one he also threw open, and a gigantic pile of pure downy snow poured in.

"What are you doing?" I asked. I was following the Arab out of the library and into an unlit hallway.

He threw open another door, but hesitated for only a moment before hurrying off.

Frightened aquamarine glanced back at me momentarily. The pale face now seemed like a statue, a grotesque sculpture of a man petrified in absolute fear.

"There's something wrong." He murmured. I hardly heard him as I rushed past the open door, a blast of chilled force blowing in my ears. Such wind... even without a cloud in the sky.

"What!" I screamed. Quatre rushed through the kitchen, straight past a door that also led outside. He did not open this one. I was following at a frantic run, wondering why we were running.

I was close enough to hear my shaken friend mutter in dread, "Something's wrong with Trowa."

He threw open a door in the hallway. We both stopped. I looked out but the wind was whipping around so much that it appeared to be a blizzard. But the sun still shone low in the western sky. I looked outside, then at Quatre. He was staring intensely into the icy chaos. I looked back outside.

Pure, blinding white.

"What's going on Quatre?" I growled angrily. He didn't reply, but his body leaned to the exit. I raised my voice, confused and scared because I had no clue what was going on or why Quatre was acting this way. "What is-"

I was cut off as forms emerged from the depths of the windstorm. Heero threw himself into the hallway, his hair and most of his body covered in white. He staggered under the weight of another.

"Fucking move," He grunted as he tripped in the doorway and pushed right past Quatre. We followed into the next room. I looked back at the door, amazed for I had never seen any sign of life outside of the ma- Where was Duo? Heero was laying Trowa down in the next room. A snow caked leg bent out at a bizarre angle.

"Trowa!" Quatre cried out.

"He needs some treatment. It's not critical but its best not to wait," Heero advised. He seemed to be looking around for something.

I helped fetch some materials with Quatre. He took over as medic. After I came back with a thin board to use as a splint, I noticed that Heero was gone again. How many minutes had gone by since they'd first come in? _Where was Duo?_ I left Trowa with Quatre and went back to the door. I heard voices shouting at each other. One of them, I sighed in relief, was Duo's.

"I didn't fucking hallucinate Heero!" Duo screamed directly in Heero's face. "I saw a town!"

"Duo-"

"Right after we saw that dog sled!" Duo was waving his arms. He had a glint in his eyes that creeped me out. His cheeks and nose were bright red, but his black trenchcoat was like Heero's, covered in melting snow. "I'm going back there!" Duo said adamantly, drowning out anything Heero could protest.

"Don't be hasty!" Heero shouted even louder, trying to calm Shingami's wrath, seeming to realize he was losing the battle. "We can't get lost out there, we'll be absolutely lost at nightfall! We need to go slow and coordinate-"

"I remember the way there! I can get back there! I'm going back. Right. NOW!" Duo was having none of it. He stamped his leg.

"I'm not letting you go alone," Heero yelled. I felt my cheeks blush, in jealousy. Heero was always trying to warm up to Duo, always playing the white knight on horseback. "Trowa will be fine as long as he gets rest."

Duo just stared at Heero for a while. A sane appearance took over his face, then he smiled and it disappeared in a loopy grin. "You mean that?" He asked. "Then come on, because I'm leaving now."

"I'm coming with you!" I shouted, surprising the two brown haired youths, and myself. I stood there while both gazed at me. "I- I-" I realized I needed some gear. "I'll be right back! I just need to get changed, wait for me. Please, just… three heads are better than one. Somebody needs to keep the map, someone to watch for pitfalls and fissures and-" I couldn't finish my thought, but rambled on at neck breaking speed until Duo shouted:

"Then hurry!"

I whipped around the house like a tornado. I had thrown together a pretty decent outfit and had even figured out snowshoes before Duo's patience ran out. I got to the hallway and was just glad to see him still waiting. He pulled his hood up, chestnut brown locks trailing down over his profile, but I saw him smile at me.

"Follow me!"

I stepped outside into the infinite stretch of winter. The sharp cold air pierced my lungs. With a little difficulty I shut the door and ran out into the steppe.

- - - - - 

An hour into the trip the sun had set and even Heero decided we should go back and try tomorrow morning. The wind was furious and the temperature freezing right to the bone. Duo protested and yelled and screamed, but he eventually gave in and we returned to the mansion for another night.

-end "Mephisto" Part 8 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

Masamune Reforged '06

Top of Form

Bottom of Form


	10. 9 Wendigo

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and 5x2, angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death?(see chapter 6 and 7 notes)  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to Masamuneehshotmail

Summary: After crashlanding in the wastes of the Arctic, the 5 Gundam pilots struggle to escape the deserted mansion that becomes their cage as time wiles on, slowly wearing each of them down. Tensions running high and clashes becoming more and more frequent, the pilots' hopes are boosted after finding a travel log and map giving clues on how to reach the outside world. Duo, feuding with Heero and fighting off Wufei's advances, the most determined to return to the battlefield, leads another expedition onto the Arctic steppe after Trowa is injured in a previous attempt.

Note: I have adjusted some of the story to fit the timetable. This story takes place in the deep north during winter. Days in winter are short in the Arctic, with the deepest part of winter sometimes having ZERO hours of sun for days, weeks, in a row.

Originally I had Duo, Heero and Wufei leave the same day of Trowa's injury. But looking back there is no way that would fit in the time allowed. So I've adjusted this part to emphasize the incredible severity of winter in the north.

Part 9 - Wendigo

Duo was banging down my door early in the morning. A bleary-eyed Heero lingered in the hallway behind him, victim to another sleepless night. Duo wanted all of us to be ready to go the moment the sun came up.

But the star did not seem to want to break the horizon on that day. Darkness continued to engulf the tundra well past when it should have. I took a lengthy shower (Duo pounding on the bathroom door loud enough to wake the dead), took my time with breakfast, double checked, triple checked my gear. I was wide awake and had been for about three hours. But Mr. Sunshine still seemed to be in bed.

Duo was fuming, "What the fuck is going on? This God's sick idea of a joke?"

Quatre woke up, entered the kitchen where the three of us were idling (Heero had fallen asleep for a few minutes, but jarred himself awake, Prussian blue eyes snapping open and scanning the room wildly at the sound of Quatre opening the door). The Sandrock pilot reported that Trowa's arm was pretty bad, but that the Heavyarms pilot would be alright. It was the first time in a long time I'd seen Quatre honestly worried about his partner. Sympathy was taking some of the poison out of the snakebite.

Another hour passed, the sun still did not rise.

"This is fucking bullshit!" Duo was at a breaking point. "I'm going!"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"We have our bearings starting out and the flashlight batteries are all recharged. Don't be such a worry wort," Duo grinned, having prepared for any protest I could make.

"You ready to rock and roll Heero?" Duo asked, flashing a smile.

Heero looked more ready to roll over and fall back to sleep, but he nodded and lifted himself out of his chair.

We had been out in the Arctic for over an hour before light finally broke the eastern horizon.

- - - - - 

The trek across the Arctic wasteland was as casual and uneventful as any trip through treacherous, barren regions can be. My first time out there, following the crash, I had been overwhelmed by the power and relentlessness of the tundra. I had floundered around in a shitty little ravine and convinced myself that I was about to die. The next time out... I still didn't want to think about that expedition...

This time, I told myself, I was not going to let the land beat me down. As we traveled, single file following Duo, the hardest thing besides physically lifting my legs and plodding forward was not getting separated. There was no falling snow; in fact, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. But the wind whipped around the already fallen flakes and threw them in a bitter, menacing dance over the endless stretch. I buttoned up my coat and tucked as much of my face under the collar as would allow me to still see where I was going. I blinked constantly to keep the snow out of my one good eye.

The sun peaked over the treetops of a forest to the east, but did not seem to have the energy to lift itself into the sky. 

I kept trying to reassure myself. I kept thinking that there was only one thing different about this place that made it seem so incredible, the cold. The snow wasn't the problem; snow is just moisture falling from the clouds. But freezing snow can have you succumb to frostbite if you don't dress right. Ice wasn't the problem. That's just frozen water. All it is is slippery. Just keep your feet like always. If you fall out here, it's just like leaving your feet anywhere else. You'll still fall the same distance, unless its into a chasm. Those weren't the problem either. Chasms, ditches, holes existed everywhere. But a steep enough fall would kill anyone, period.

The real problem was that all of these little things were cold, and people don't like the cold. I sure wasn't enjoying myself, and from Heero's sporadic cursing, he was loving it as much as I was. So, there we were, three of us unlucky enough to be out there in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We could explode an atomic warhead here and people would never notice... until the radiation fallout did its work. If another soul drifted this forbidden crack of Earth he was a fool. I wondered if whoever created the world had made this place especially as a haven from men. It certainly seemed like the hostile environment was naturally pitted against us.

- - - - - 

"See!" Duo yelled from the front, turning towards Heero and I. White flakes and his hood covered a majority of Duo's face, but I could make out a wide smile over the brim of the collar. "Straight ahead!" I looked around. Visibility was low, but I couldn't find any signs of trees or anything at… Wait… Straining my only useful eye, I squinted into the distance. Small brown pebbles seemed to sit on the western horizon. We'd traveled for well over four hours.

"Looks like you were right," Heero was smiling, but the Perfect Soldier had such a strange one. He looked like he was trying to suck on a lime.

"Course I was right!" Duo puffed himself up proudly. I stayed quiet, surveying the terrain and still looking for any unexpected drop-offs. There was no way to tell where the land fell away.

As we came close we saw that the town was not a real town, it was a mere settlement. Rundown wooden shacks faced each other from opposite sides of the only road. The road was more of a patch of ice than anything else. I counted only a few dozen homes, but this many people braving the Arctic waste everyday astounded me. Duo and Heero were slowly moving ahead of me, and I rushed to catch up with them.

"What the?" Heero exclaimed suddenly. We had been passing a burned out shack on the outskirts when suddenly a furry figure jumped out at us. Cobalt eyes narrowing, Heero stared down at the …child?

I squinted too. Under a heavy, muddy brown colored parka ,and an equally filthy hat, two deep, dark eyes stared back. Duo approached the child, his mouth open with whatever he'd been about to say. Heero brought his hand out from under the right side of his coat, his usual spot for a gun. A muffled voice seemed to laugh at us from under the merry opal orbs of the child.

"Did he say something?" I asked. My peripheral vision picked up another figure standing at the doorway of one of the closer hovels. The child said something in a quick, laughing voice. I could not make out a word.

"It's a girl," Duo said, matter of factly. I grunted. How could anyone tell the difference with all the clothing hiding her? "Hey little girl," Duo knelt in the snow, a gloved hand reaching out. She took a step back, to which Duo sourly said, "Hey. I can see why you might be afraid of these sour looking guys, but don't be afraid of me!"

"Where is this place?" Heero tried. The little girl did not say anything, so the Wing pilot tried again, "What is your home called?" The kid began to speak louder, but I could not make out a clear word. Heero frowned and said to the two of us, "She isn't speaking any language I've ever heard before."

"Fuckin' figures," Duo growled. He turned away and yelled at yet another native who had left the warmth of the hearth to get a look at the strangers, "Hey you! Do you speaka dee English!" The man, for it was clearly a man with a long beard, promptly slammed his door, retreating indoors. "Fuckin' figures."

"Let me try something," Heero said, sniffling slightly from the cold.

For the next ten minutes, he tried communicating with the girl in Japanese, but it was soon obvious that she did not understand him at all. I tried a few different languages, but I still could not get a word that I could understand out of her.

More people came out of their homes, congregating together and eying us. They stuck together in a small, tight, cluster. It didn't escape me that some of them were carrying crude weapons. Eventually what had to be the entire village was gathering around us, and a stout, dark skinned woman called the little girl over to her side. I looked at Duo, to Heero, to Duo.

"We're lost," Heero stated to the crowd. Even if they didn't understand us, the natives could surely have guessed our plight. But they seemed reluctant to even approach us. "Does anyone have access to a radio-"

"Stop being an idiot Heero," Duo cut in. "It's obvious none of them have any idea what we're all about." He shook his head, kicking a snow embankment out of sheer boredom. "Maybe," his violet eyes lit with a startling glitter, "Maybe the best thing would be for us to split up. We'll be able to cover more ground. I don't know if they'll have any place for us to stay the night."

I glanced at the sun, it was barely sitting on the horizon and seemed to already be descending... I did not want to be out on the frozen hell with only a moon to light the way.

"Just don't get too far away," I said. It turned out that Heero must have said something very similar, because Duo rounded on both of us and snapped with such intensity that some of the villagers raised their primitive weapons in defense:

"I'm not fucking helpless!" Duo yelled. His eyes narrowed at the two of us. "Both of you never stop mothering me, like I don't have a goddamn clue! I'm more than capable of looking out for myself. What? Can't I get a moment alone? You drive me up the goddamn wall!"

With braid snaking out from his hood, Duo wheeled around and stalked off. I made to follow him, but Heero quickly insisted otherwise, "Leave him alone. He needs to clear his head I guess."

Both of us stood and looked at each other for a while. Some of the villagers began to walk off; it appeared they wanted to keep an eye on Duo. They continued to chat in their own language. I gave Heero a blank look; he returned an equally vacant stare. I was beginning to hate the Japanese nuisance.

"It would be best if we all split up," I finally broke the silence. Heero just nodded, then walked over to the remaining group of Inuits. I uneasily glanced in the direction Duo had walked off in, but he was no longer in sight. With a sigh I began to investigate the houses.

- - - - - 

The first house's door, where the bearded man had appeared, was locked. I knocked more times than was courteous, but only because I knew the occupant was hiding from me. After a few minutes of silence I decided to leave the coward alone.

The next house's door was swung wide open the moment my knock reverberated through the weak wooden frame. A very red lady, she seemed the color of a tomato to me, threw out her fat arms in a greeting and I backed away, thinking she was going to hug me. She grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me inside.

The hut had two rooms, neither of which was a bathroom. Two uncomfortable looking, dirt stained cots decorated the room along with numerous blankets and articles of clothing. A girl's voice rung out from what I suspected was the eating area. She rushed into the room, banging her knee on a table. The smell of vodka was incredibly strong; it seemed to issue from the walls themselves. The girl broke out into half- laughter, half- cursing, none of which I could understand.

The mother, for I figured that these two were related, was very drunk herself, but she was pleasant and even offered me the lone chair in the shack. I refused, and began asking as many questions as I could get out. The fat red lady kept interrupting, slurring her speech so much that I wondered if even her own daughter understood what she was trying to tell me. I struggled to get a complete sentence out, and the instant I did, the daughter suddenly screamed at a blood curdling pitch.

She had been drinking from what looked to be a bottle of spirits. For some reason, my words got such a reaction out of her that she dropped the glass container and actually leapt into my arms. She began to squeeze me so tight that I nearly punched her in the head. The mother was scolding her, and picking up the bottle that had begun to leak across the cracked floor. The girl began to hurriedly whisper and drawl into me ear.

"Please, ack," My protest was choked, but I gradually fought back enough to secure ample breathing capacity for my hurting lungs. "Please let me go." I tried to make it look like I had made a mistake, knocked on the wrong door. But the more I talked and for every foot I staggered towards the door, the tighter the girl's hands grasped my coat and the louder she began to talk. Soon she was absolutely yelling in my ear. It was all I could do to not throw her to the floor.

"Jelon!" A roar came from the mother, obviously at her daughter. An unintelligible string of words followed, with the girl fiercely combating whatever message her mother was trying to instill in her.

Then the girl, to my surprise, began to kiss my face and said, in English, "No go!" I stopped and looked her in the eyes; they were filmed over and her mouth hung open, the stench of alcohol wafting out. "Jelon want-see Hollywood!" She kissed me again, and her mother's wrath became even greater and was suddenly directed at me, with the aid of a broom.

With both females in hysterics, I was relieved when I finally heard a voice outside calling, "Duo!"

I immediately grabbed the drunken fool's wrists, and wrenched her away. She stumbled and nearly tipped into a wall. She was beginning to cry, and she sobbed a few English words in-between her tears. I could tell I would get nothing from this place.

"Wufei!" Another yell from Heero outside.

"Sorry," I sputtered, not knowing what else to say. The girl was shaking her head, dully banging against the wall. The mother seemed content, despite the hurricane that my coming had started in her home. In fact, she was so wrapped up in the bottle of spirits that I doubt she heard me slip outside. The last image I saw was of the girl's tear stained face raking against the wall and the bottle's bottom glinting in the light as the fat lady polished off the last dregs.

Outside, I found Heero yelling Duo's and my names in the street. Upon my stumbling outside, he quickly turned to me and asked, "Where's Duo?" I stood like a statue outside the entrance of the hut, taking in the fresh air and clearing my head. The bearded man was outside again, smoking a pipe and eying my suspiciously. Heero repeated his question, "Where's Duo?"

It may have been the two hopelessly drunk women, or the bearded coward's stare, or the entire situation, but I was absolutely filled with rage at the simple, concerned question from the Perfect Soldier. I snapped at him, "You were the one that let him go off to clear his head. Remember?" Heero seemed to consider this for a second, but I seethed, "What do you want?"

"Ah," Heero blinked, as a total idiot would. Always distracted by Maxwell. Or was the fatigue doing it? "I think there may be another settlement of natives towards the west." Heero jerked his gloved hand in the direction that the sun was falling towards. Soon it would be completely dark.

"Where?" I asked. I could not see anything, even squinting into the distance.

"That group of natives kept signaling for me to head in that direction," Heero answered, regaining his senses. "You and Duo can cover this place. Also try to find lodging for the night. Is that man motioning for you?"

Heero's sudden question turned my attention back to the old man. Indeed, he was nodding and jerking his head, as if enticing me to go over to him. Heero said, "Try it. Maybe he can help us. Oh!" Heero had begun to walk off, but he rushed back to ask me, "You'll tell Duo where I went when you see him?"

I told Heero I would, and he headed off into the vast emptiness. I looked at the ramshackle houses one by one, ending with the first house, where the old man was still smoking his pipe. Even in such pitiful poverty, the bent elder had an air of superiority. He had a casual, but not lazy, posture and his eyes sparkled with calm wisdom, yet confidence reigned there. As I walked over to him, I got a bizarre impression that he was a part of a different land, and for a second I forgot about the horrible place I was stuck in.

- - - - - 

As I approached the old man nodded at me, a tangled mess of beads and other jewelry that appeared to be made out of the bones of some sort of animal jangled. He opened his mouth in a smile, and the clinking of his accessories seemed to be his only voice. Then, from between the black teeth, the Inuit elder said, "Hello."

I was stunned. I wondered if he'd simply picked it up from when we had tried to communicate with the other natives? The old man smiled more, exposing his gums. He had a wide mouth, and it seemed to slur the words as they escaped him in a cloud of breath, "Hello boy."

I nearly choked on my own speech, "Eh? You understand? You speak my language?" I was mightily confused. It didn't seem possible that anyone out here understood English. But the man nodded, still smiling. I asked him, "Where is this?"

"Our Land," He simply replied. I thought perhaps he was dumb. "Home is Nour. This is Ivoglin." He slurred his s's with a strained tongue. He understood me, but his concept of grammar and pronunciation was very off. I marveled at the idea that somewhere here he had learned a different language from his own. "You say Alaska."

"We are... not from Earth," I wondered if he had even heard of space colonies. "We are looking for a shuttle, a ship back to, to anywhere really."

"No ship here, no now," The old man put his pipe back into a small pocket in his tattered coat. A tinge of sadness erased his smile. "No whale now. No ship. Where you travel?"

"Anywhere." I nearly added, 'that is civilized', but I was not going to risk insulting this lone source of connection to a life and time that seemed so far away. "I need to get to a spaceport. I need to go to the Colonies," I pointed to the cloudy sky. Would all this be over his head?

He smiled good-naturedly and answered, "Come listen. I have story. You good hear tale. Come listen." He began to walk away.

I tried protesting and was still trying to explain space shuttles and airplanes to him when we reached a small tent. I stopped suddenly upon seeing it, as it had been hidden behind one of the shacks, but the old man stooped over and pulled aside the flap, entering. I had very little choice but to follow.

The inside of the tent was cluttered. Talismans, beaded knick-knacks and roughly drawn paintings decorated the sloping sides and seemed to form almost the image of a starry skyline. In between two smoking sticks of incense, the old man was getting comfortable in what had to be his favorite seat. I saw no chairs or mattresses of any kind to sleep on. I sighed, thinking that maybe this was too much trouble and probably a dead end, but then sat down. Even sitting at the opening, my legs were nearly touching the bent knees of the Inuit who calmly sat at the wall opposite me.

"Story is very old," The medicine man, for what else could he be, smiled. "But good listen you to old tales. Many lessons. Many meanings also for today." He took a deep breath. He had not once taken his eyes off of me, and he was almost glaring at me now with such intensity that I readied myself in case he lunged forward in attack. "Demons, you know they love paining men."

I sent up a heated protest, but it seemed to die in the canvas and the old man was still going on even as I angrily denied the existence of any supernatural forces. I'd heard so much rubbish about that kind of thing from Quatre and Duo recently!

He said, "Men kill men too, but demons always hate men. Is because demons know men worse than demons. Men fight men, many wars. Demons fight men too, not in war. In old days, men fought back. This is story."

What could I do? For all I knew, if I didn't amuse this senile fool, we'd never find a way out. Besides, the notion of searching through more houses like the fat, drunk women's made me queasy. I settled into a reluctant silence, forgetting the bitter world outside and vigorously inhaling the swirling stream of incense through my nose.

- - - - - 

For the reader's sake I myself will recount the story the shaman told me. But, so as to not take away from the experience, I will also add some of my own interruptions and comments. Yes, this may be confusing, but I assure you it is much simpler than trying to decipher what exactly the old man's limited English failed to convey at times.

At first, the old shaman spoke about how different demons came to be and how they could take on physical form. He claimed that demons were a conglomeration of misery, pain and evil thoughts, and that when similar negative forces came together, with a general "desire", they created a demon.

I, of course, interjected and asked why nobody saw or spoke of demons anymore. He wrote me off by stating that in modern days, demons needed to be stealthy and remain hidden to survive. Newer demons tended to form into disease, while other would-be demons settled into the hearts and minds of people, bending their actions to an evil end.

The Arctic, the elder explained, had remained unchanged from the beginning of time, locked in a consistent icy turmoil. The freezing temperature had no mercy, killing animals and men alike through frostbite or hypothermia. The snow and ice that poured down from the heavens were among the most powerful forms of the elements. The ground itself was suffocated by the snowstorms and the ice malevolently formed a slippery web of deception, giving an illusion of safety where no firm foothold could be taken. The wind added to both the cold and the ice, maliciously whipping around particles of frost to scatter into one's vision and create absolute chaos in the blink of an eye. The stinging of the wind sought to manipulate the temperature and the frost for its own purpose.

While I could not argue that nature did sometimes appear to have almost human characteristics, I had a hard time believing that wind and water had a will of its own. But after thinking about it, it's impossible to deny that the wind is not very much like a schoolyard bully. It prowls the land at a frightening pace, knocking everything out of its way. The wind can only move and knock over things that are weaker than it. Just as the wind uses chasms and hills to gain force, a bully seeks cronies to increase his power in the school.

The elder said that it was the wind, combined with the bitter cold and bone-rattling storms that formed the demon called Wendigo. Up until this point, I'd sat quietly. But I suddenly felt irritation at the old man, as if he were somehow deceiving me and leading me on to some end. I asked him how he knew the demon's name. He replied that everyone native to Alaska knew of Wendigo.

The Wendigo was a wandering demon; content with spreading pain and death wherever it would roam. It took the form of a man covered in tattered animal hides, although it's face was more like a wolf's than anything human. Wendigo would use his monstrous speed and strength to destroy homes, rape women and maim children. He delighted in creating as much suffering as possible.

Because the Wendigo had a physical body it had eat and drink like any other creature. It preferred the blood and flesh of humans, and would even eat unburied corpses. Gradually the Wendigo became so accustomed to eating humans that it would not eat any other kind of meat, preferring to eat moss rather than deer or any other animal when it could find no human prey.

But, in order to keep up its negative energy, the Wendigo needed to also consume souls, tainted souls. This may sound hard, but the hearts of men corrupt easily, and the Wendigo would get his fill from almost any normal person, so long as their essence was one of hatred, fear, sorrow or cowardice. The Wendigo could easily instill any of the above, and even mutilated his own toes and lips so as to create more powerful reactions from its victims.

However, the Wendigo had been killed hundreds of years ago.

- - - - -

The Wendigo had settled in the area of Ivoglin, which was called by another name at the time, when he met his end. In one of the seaside communities, there lived two great warriors. They had grown up together and had shared a great rivalry and bond since childhood. Johanasea, the shyer of the pair, eventually proved himself through traditional tests of courage and bravery to be the greater of the two. He was rewarded by being named the leader of the great whaling expeditions. He sat in the very back of the whaling boat and would steer and shout out commands during the hunt.

As it turned out, Johanasea's longtime rival, Nukilik, was not regarded as any less important to the town, which relied on the whales to produce an annual supply of oil and blubber. In the same year that Johanasea became leader of the whaling hunt, the point man of the expeditions died. A contest was held to see which man possessed the best eye and the best judgment for pursuing the great beasts. Nukilik won, hands down, and was seated at the very front of the boat. For a successful hunt to be realized, the leader and the pointer must work in perfect tandem. Not surprisingly, the two rivals soon became the best of friends.

In fact, they became quite a bit more than friends. And although homosexuality was not frowned on in the remote tundra, the two leaders of the community were expected to pass on their great spirits through a child. Marriages were arranged for both men, although they had no love for any except the other. When the ceremonies were completed, Nukilik set his tent up next to Johanasea's. They spent several years like this. Nukilik had many children, but Johanasea had trouble begetting a son. His wife had had four stillbirths, all male. The shaman called this a "bad omen".

Finally, Johanasea's wife bore him a son. He was a sickly, ugly baby, but his father loved him greatly. The entire village showered the son of their leader and greatly spoiled him. The two lovers had been so successful in their recent hunts that the town was growing richer than it had ever been.

Alas, great fortune goes hand in hand with great misfortune, and the Wendigo appeared along the coast again, having drifted out of the eastern forests after dozens of years in which his name had almost been forgotten in Ivoglin.

The day after a great hunt, Johanasea and Nukilik returned to the shore with yet another humpback. However, upon docking their boat both noticed that none of the villagers would look them in the eye. They even seemed saddened by the return of the two hunters. Soon, word reached Nukilik that his wife had been raped and murdered, by the ancient demon, and that Johanasea's only son was missing from the village.

They consulted the elder. He told them there was nothing that could be done about the Wendigo; he had killed two of Nukilik's sons, decent fighters in their own regard, during the rape. Johanasea was told to give up on his son. But, the elder's tent was soon filled with commotion. A group of lumberjacks near the great forest had rushed from their work to tell how a gigantic man who hailed them from far away had approached them. The visitor's face had been masked in the veil of the windswept dusts, but it was undoubtedly the legendary Wendigo. He had held up the young boy for all to see, and cackled, in a barely understandable bass, that the boy would be unharmed if his father could claim him before nightfall. The demon had departed before the lumberjacks even knew what he had really been. But they said he moved at "a frightening speed, as if his feet were skimmers cutting through the ocean and as if the very wind and ice propelled his great mass." Johanasea immediately left the elder's hut.

Up until this point, I had listened to the story with great interest. I had only interrupted the Inuit to inquire about the specifics of whaling, which I had no knowledge of whatsoever. However, it is fair to say, that at this point in the story, I became very annoyed with my entire situation. I persisted in asking as many questions as popped into my head. Comparatively, the rest of the story took almost three times as long to be related to me as the earlier part.

Nukilik followed Johanasea to their twin huts. There, the lead hunter was preparing his dog sled and loading a gigantic whaling spear onto it. He refused to answer his friend and lover, who suggested that this was some sort of trap and that the demon had most likely already slaughtered the innocent child. But Johanasea would not listen to any of this, and it was only when Nukilik resigned himself to accompanying him that he shed tears. It was almost summer time, and the sun was only starting to wane from its position overhead.

The two hurried to the lumberjack camp, which lay on the edge of a marvelous forest. This forest, I was told, had entirely been consumed by the endless greed of men in years afterwards. There they picked up the trail of the demon and Johanasea mushed the dogsled with vigor, driving his huskies relentlessly. The trail had been left purposefully, and Nukilik could not help fearing for his lover and himself as the day whiled itself away.

Finally, after hours of pursuit, with the sky disappearing into the ocean, the two reached the edge of light and dark. Here the sinking sun's bright rays were warming the slushy snow for the final moment of the day. With a quick command, Johanasea stopped the dogs. It was hard to see in the half-light. But, at the edge of the woods, only a foot or two past the border between darkness and brightness, they saw their enemy. The monster's face was covered in a thick, dark liquid, and a tiny, prone form lay at its feet. Johanasea began to rush forward, his spear at the ready, but the monster suddenly laughed:

"Nightfall!" A garbled, almost birdlike squark emanated from Wendigo. He smiled an evil, blood stained smile. "I spare the boy though, so you may suffer and see him tortured. Then I will eat your heart and put the youth to death, his father's fume an eternal part of me."

In a rage that knows no fear, the two friends rushed forward, raising their weapons for an attack. Nukilik, with his knives glimmering in the sunset, reached the beast first. His attack missed. The sickening apparition sidestepped him effortlessly. A war cry burst from Johanasea's lungs, filled with anger and vengeance, but his spear only cut the air.

"You will never kill me! No man can match the Wendigo!" The demon screeched in mockery, but his taunt was caught short as Nukilik rushed in for a second attack, this time swinging his blades in a wide arc, but still falling short. "I move over the tundra like the wind!" Wendigo laughed.

But, the two fighters were quickly pinning the demon into a corner. The thick wall of trees was soon pressing up to the beast's back, and he found he could not dart through either of the two and was too large to easily escape into the thick brush.

Infuriated, he paused for a moment during one of Nukilik's lunges. One of the daggers tore through the sinew of the devil's shoulder, but the beast grabbed Nukilik by the arm. The beast began to squeeze the bones so that the snap was audible over the melee of the fight. But Nukilik repeated his stab, and again he cut the monster, and again and again. Finally, Wendigo howled in pain and threw the warrior against a tree with such force that an entire pile of snow shook down to cover the man.

Johanasea had taken this time to aim an attack directly at the monster's head. Two blood shot, yellow eyes snarled from under the wild furry hair, but even the Wendigo could not move fast enough to avoid his nemesis' attack. The spear sank an inch into the demon's chest, but Johanasea's lunge was suddenly halted there. The enraged hunter met the stare of the ancient evil, who had grabbed the spear in both hands to stop the attack.

"You can never overcome me, you can only become a part of me," The Wendigo growled haughtily. "Greater fighters than you have gouged me with their greatest efforts and with deadeye accuracy, but their spear heads only bring blood, not my end. The metal of their blades throb inside me, shielding my heart like armor!" And with gargantuan strength, Wendigo twisted the spear in his chest and wrung it from the hunter's grasp. As he lost control of his weapon, Johanasea was dispatched to the icy ground by a sharp swing, the spear's shaft cracking his jaw.

Nukilik glanced between the vile menace and his injured lover. He knew the fight was rapidly drawing to a close. It was then that he threw himself, head first, at the Wendigo, one knife aimed at the beast's throat and the other at his temple. Wendigo could not possibly block both, and so he patiently waited for Nukilik to race forward, to yell a battle cry, and to be only a hair's breadth away from his own chest before he turned his massive arms into a bear hug, forcing the spear through the brave's back and out the other end. Nukilik screamed, but a thick gurgling cut off the shout.

Johanasea's scream, however, rung off the Arctic steppe, bouncing over the shimmering surface that was steeped in a dark red color from the sun's last rays. Johanasea had picked himself up only to see his friend and lover fatally pierced. Mindlessly he charged Wendigo without a weapon. The beast roared, and carelessly attempted to throw Nukilik off the bloody spear.

But the warrior's hands desperately clung to the dirty fur of the demon. Wendigo felt the nails breaking off into his shoulders, and even with his best efforts, he could not move his arms. He looked down, and for the first time in his existence, was terrified by the face he saw. A small smile was on Natuk's sweat covered face, a trickle of blood running down to his chin. His muscles were bulging as if the very blood in his veins was coursing in an attempt to stay alive. But his eyes, they struck fear into Wendigo. A tranquil but determined hardness shown in the hunter's dark iris. They promised vengeance out of a force stronger than fury or hate.

Wendigo's shoulders began to shake as he tried to brush the dying foe away, but his time was up. Johanasea threw his hardest punch at the beast's face. Both hand and jaw broke on contact. Wendigo stumbled backwards, but regained his sense of center and lurched forward to gain balance. Nevertheless, the arms of death were still firmly encircled about him, and Nukilik managed to tip the great beast forward. Even a demon cannot stop gravity, and with the combined mass and the last ounces in the fading hunter, the Wendigo's body fell atop the spear, sliding down until the head broke through the beast's spine and jutted out the end, its blood soaked glitter sparkling in the last minute of daylight.

- - - - - 

"Is that how a demon dies?" I asked, sensing the story was over. Or at least no longer caring to hear the rest. "Didn't all his powers allow him to survive a flesh wound?"

"Spear pierced Nukilik's heart. Hot enough to pierce Wendigo's. Only warmth can destroy that which is frozen. You believe story," The elder half-asked, half-stated.

"Yes," I replied hurriedly, "But don't you think the Wendigo survived?"

"I thought you didn't believe in 'stupid ghost stories' Wufei?" A familiar voice chuckled from the half-drawn flap of the tent. Duo's snow covered head popped inside. I wondered how long I had been sitting there. I suddenly felt very stupid, but the American only made things worse, "You can be such a weak hypocrite. This is what you do with the time we have to search for a way off this hell?"

"Did you find anything?" I growled back. But Duo didn't answer; instead he addressed the old man:

"Such a powerful demon couldn't have died instantly, even if the spear went through his heart AND spine," Duo stated it as if he had heard the legend long before the old man. "Didn't he retreat into the woods or something like that with a 'mortal wound'?"

I turned back to the old man. And such a change had come over him! The color was drained from his face, so that his eyes seemed to pop out like an insect's, large and quivering. His hand was shuddering, and his jaw was dropped. His head was quaking, looking back and forth between Duo and myself.

"You leave. Now!" The old man pointed a finger at the two of us. "Now!" He repeated, and both of us left in such a rush I was ten feet from the tent before I realized I needed to button up my parka.

"Weird old man." I mumbled. "So did you find anything?" I turned to Duo, who was still eying the tent, where a plume of smoke was now creeping from.

"No. There's nothing in this town that could help us," Duo muttered. I looked at him closely. He seemed to be much better for some reason. His alabaster skin was not sickly looking; it almost seemed to shine in the light, or lack thereof. It was almost dark.

"It's getting late," I observed. "We should have been heading back by now. Where's Heero?"

The Deathscythe pilot was still watching the Inuit's tent, biting his lip. Just as I was going to repeat the question, Duo chortled and his face turned into a silly grin. He turned away from the shaman's hut and put an arm around my shoulder.

"We should find him and get out of here as quickly as possible," Duo kicked the snow absentmindedly. "What a dump."

"The sun is almost setting again. We'd need to travel through the night to reach home," I said. Strangely, it made me miss the cavernous abode, being in this desolate place. At least the faded gaudiness of the house was enough to entertain the eye. Everything here was stonewashed an austere gray. "We'll need to stay here for the night."

"Fuck no!" Duo protested. He had begun to roll a clump of snow together as if to gather enough for the base of a snowman. At this suggestion he stopped and stamped his foot right through the pile. "I'm not staying here! I'd rather grope my way back to the haunted house. We can still make it-"

"No way," I stopped him. I sensed there was something wrong. Why was he so moody? I gave him a sweet smile; his face was absolutely gorgeous when he got flustered. "I'm not falling down anymore ravines. We'd be idiots to try to hurry back; the sun's almost down. We need to make camp here."

"I agree," Heero, like a cat, had approached us without my noticing. "We'll stay here for the night."

"Any ideas on where?" Duo spat at Heero and me, his good mood lost. "I hear the snow banks are a lovely place to sleep; eternal sleep that is."

For some reason, both Heero and Duo looked at me. I let out a sigh, staring at the unpainted walls of the impoverished homes. I was not looking forward to a night in a shit hole with the stench of alcohol and two lunatics smothering me.

-end "Wendigo" Part 9 in

Souls Disappear in the Snow

Feedback (please?) to: Wendigo is actually a well-known Native American folklore creature. However, it traditionally appears in Algonquin tales, much less so in Inuit ones. The only thing I have added (borrowing from the numerous depictions of Wendigo from lore) is the Wendigo's need to consume tainted souls, although I do not see anything very out of place about that. If such an evil creature ever did exist, it would need to replenish its dark energy along with its physical strength... I have also abandoned the notion that normal men can become Wendigo by simply seeing one or by cannibalizing others.

More on Wendigo: http/en. is not a real town or region, at least not to my knowledge. I have taken the name from Fyodor Doestoevsky's _The Idiot. _The name is to emphasize that the first colonial rulers of this particular Arctic region were Russian, as hinted earlier.

On the two Inuit names, Nukilik means "is strong" in Inuit, while Johanasea (an obvious misspelling on my part, pronounced Joe-Han-e-see) is named after the only actual Inuit I know, who is a sculptor from the north of Canada. I don't know quite what the latter means.


	11. 10 Frostbitten

Souls Disappear in the Snow- GW fanfic  
Masamune Reforged '06

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing or any of the characters therein.  
Warnings: yaoi (established 3x4, developing 1x2 and 5x2, angst, violence, supernatural, cursing, death?(see chapter 5 and 6 notes)  
Archive: Anyone that wishes to archive this fic is welcome to.  
Comments: to MasamuneEHShotmail

Part 10 - Frostbitten

Duo woke me up before sunrise. It was my least favorite part of the day, that lingering moment of transition. It was the time I felt the weakest, disconnected from everything. In the early hours the sharp detail of reality and the clairvoyant illusion of dreams blend seamlessly. Where memory and fantasy lie is hard to differentiate. I bolted up, absolutely awake the moment Duo woke me with a gentle shake and a soft voice. I trembled as I looked around the dark room. It was freezing.

I had had a dream. I was roaming the tundra, racing swiftly despite the icy wind harassing my face. I was hunting. I had dreamed that I was hunting Duo, schlepping a gigantic bow and arrow set over my shoulder. I had followed many tracks, some human and others wolf. Finally, I was almost upon my prey. But coming upon him I found that he was not alone.

A small wax candle burned low in a lantern that creaked as Duo held it. Right next to me lay Heero, still asleep.

I had dreamed that Heero had held a gun to my head. I could recall the vision as if it had actually recently happened, engraved in fresh memory. Sinister, insane cobalt eyes bore down on me, smirking, aiming the nozzle at my forehead. Heero was smiling… his form flickering in heat generated by the great fireplace in the mansion, the contours immeasurable and almost malleable.

My mouth curled up into a frown, and through clenched teeth I muttered to Duo, "What time is it?"

"Time to get the fuck out of here," Duo's face was deathly pale in the half-light, but he was smiling vibrantly. He looked as if he had been awake for a long time, slowly warming up to the sunless morning. "Those women were quite a show. I never knew you enjoyed that kind of company Wu-man." Duo's grin seemed plastered to his face, as if invisible strings curled his lips. "They kept us up almost all night asking the same fucking questions about Hollywood movies and pop idols. Like they were infatuated with us."

"Wouldn't the idea of the outside world absolutely crush you if this was the dirty piece of ice you lived on?" I asked through parched lips. "There anything to drink?"

The American turned away from me, and then produced a lightly frosted canteen. "I filled them up so we can get a quick start." Duo threw the water at me. "I know what being poor and miserable is like, trust me on that one. Takes all you've got just to get to the next day. But still, those women were absolute psychos. That fat girl tried to get me to sleep with her, showed me her choch when I was using the shitter. Fuckin' gruesome… Then all night I felt like I was being groped and fucked with in my sleep… Although, of course, that could have just been you or Heero."

I was preparing a sharp comeback when Heero suddenly stirred. I should have known the slightest noise would wake him, and part of me wondered how long he'd been laying there, aware. "I knew I had a good dream," He smirked, a rare sight that I thought might have been a figment of the poor lighting.

Duo's content, smug look never faded. "Let's get the fuck outta Dodge," He said.

- - - - - 

The trek home was, by and large, pleasant. Even if the freezing air burned my lungs as I took in each breath, I appreciated it somewhat. The musty smell of the mansion, the heavy layer of dust, seemed to be shaken off finally, like a tree after shedding its dead leaves.

Heero and Duo were going through quite a change too. Duo had been acting strangely during the time we were forced to hide from OZ, and his bizarre behavior had escalated in frequency and intensity after the crash. But now, it was the old, grinning and joking Duo Maxwell.

All along the way back, Duo and Heero talked loudly, their voices carrying over the surprisingly serene tundra. The wind that had swept the mansion for so many days seemed to have never existed. The only sign that it had ever come was the countless snow dunes, which I knew must have been originally formed by the great gales heaving messes of snow until they formed a pile. The valleys and hills, all equally frozen solid, captivated me for half the journey.

I did my best to not be anti-social. Duo was constantly cracking jokes and bubbling excitedly about stuff we'd not even thought about since our ill-fated arrival. His favorite restaurant on L2, his recordings of music he stowed in a secret compartment on the Deathsycthe, the war, and what we might all do when it ended… I laughed along with him and Heero, weakly, sometimes wondering if we hadn't already lost the war. It had been months since we'd fought any kind of battle against Romafeller or OZ. But, I was mostly preoccupied with the two brown haired pilots walking in front of me.

As I hung back, Heero's laughter seemed to drift to me, ringing gaily in my ears. The Perfect Soldier would reply, sometimes even with, and I marveled at, a joke or witty remark. Immediately, as if signaled by the mere sound of Heero's voice, Duo would break out into laughter or keep the conversation going with an incredibly fast mouth and excited answers that seemed to spring out of a part of him that had been dormant for a long time.

I thought I hardly recognized the two. Didn't they always fight? Didn't they always get on each other's nerves? I knew I hadn't hallucinated the many scuffles where Duo would almost break down in tears while Heero calmly threatened to murder him. How then could they simply wake up one day and ignore all their differences and past conflicts? … Yes, of course they were attracted to each other. Both were handsome young men… but… was it that strong? … Was it love?

I started to wonder what Duo saw in Heero… and didn't see in me…

"Yo Wufei!" I looked up. Duo and Heero had gotten a considerable distance ahead of me. They had stopped and turned around, Duo calling out, "Get the lead out! We're almost back!"

I jogged to catch up, and when I reached the top of the dune where they were waiting, Duo was nearly in tears and hysterically laughing at the same time, apparently from something Heero had just said.

"What's so funny?" I asked, my voice sounding dead and irritated. Heero glared at me menacingly. It certainly wasn't his gentleness that made Duo fond of him…

Duo wiped tears from his face, cheeks red from lack of breath and the low temperature. By the time he had composed himself, I could clearly see that Heero obviously would prefer if I had hung back for the entire journey. Duo straightened up, smiling at Heero, then at me. Then he said, "Heero just asked me out to dinner."

"What's so funny about that?" I automatically spat. A rush of emotion, all ugly and twisted by my own bitter thoughts, blasted me. Nevertheless I registered a plastic-like smile, as if it really was a joke. But, from the horrible grimace on Heero's angry countenance, I knew he had seriously just asked Duo out on a date.

"Nothing… nothing… hehe," Duo could hardly keep back laughter as he brushed the last remnants of moisture from his amethyst eyes. "It… it was just the way he said it… Ha. Guess you had to be there for it… Oh wow. Hehe..."

I shrugged, but the jealousy and bitterness were burning in the deepest depths of my soul. I wanted to grab the smirking Deathscythe pilot and kiss him, open-mouthed and passionately, right in front of Heero. I wanted to kick Heero in the face. And still, a large part of me just wanted to disappear altogether. Still, I tried to make a joke:

"Guess you can have a nice dinner next time you two go back to that settlement," My voice was strained, but the terrible anger was snuffed under my mask of mirth. I grinned and asked Heero, "You have a reservation with those lovely ladies for when?"

"Three or four days," The Japanese youth mumbled, so softly I almost missed him. I thought my ears were playing tricks on me. "That's when I'm going back there."

My questions were answered for me, as Duo noticed the surprise on my face. "Guess you were straggling too far back to hear… When Heero went searching through the outskirts, he found a man with a small runway and a hangar." I coughed. Duo continued, "The plane wasn't there, but Heero managed to press the owner for some information." At this, he gave Heero a meaningful look and chuckled, "So it looks like we'll have our own private flight out of this place in just a couple of days."

I could hardly believe it. We were… leaving… in just a few days! I took a deep breath of air, just to see if the cold burn was the same. It tasted and felt just as it always had, stinging yet refreshing. The time had come.

"Actually," Heero started to speak, and I turned to him. "The plane is going to be back in a few days, but apparently it might not be ready for some time."

"How's that?" I wondered aloud. A part of me sneered… leave it to Duo to hype up our hopes, just to see us helplessly wallow about and wait for some cock-eyed plan to fail.

"The pilot is bringing the plane back from the last trip of the year," Heero informed me. "The owner said that he doesn't plan to send out any more flights until next spring, when the darkness lifts. The plane is a very old model, and it needs to be serviced before it takes off again… And also, the 'dark' months are supposed to be here soon." Heero frowned and said, "The guy said for some reason the winter looks like it will be longer than normal."

I looked up. The sun was already retreating to the crest of the western horizon. You could count the number of day-lit hours on one hand recently. Indeed, the days had been progressively getting shorter and shorter. I tried to imagine a day without sunshine… Entire months of darkness…

"Heero doesn't believe the guy," Duo smiled, still so hopeful. "About the plane needing service."

"He just doesn't want to lend it to us," Heero scowled at the thought. "Even after I explained told him what happened, he stubbornly refused to give it to us… But, in a few days I'll come back to change his mind." On this ominous note, Heero suddenly turned around and walked over the crest of the snow bank. I followed, and saw, after passing over the summit, that the mansion was now in sight.

- - - - - 

Even though Duo was the one that despised being trapped in the musty old building the most, he broke out into a sprint once the snowcapped towers came into view. Heero and I approached the house from the kitchen's side. The door to the kitchen was buried under heavy mounds of white, but one of the windows was open, and the scent of cooking and Duo's voice drifted out, welcoming us. I slid in rather easily, and was greeted by a stench that immediately drew my eyes to the stove. I wondered if Trowa, who was standing there with a torn, silly-looking apron on, knew what he was doing. The meat was charred black.

"…and then Wufei and I heard this ghost story from an Indian about an ancient demon that haunted the area around here, but the house we stayed in was a shit hole, and some people were total head cases and didn't seem to like outsiders, but it wasn't a hard trip at all, a pretty nice vacation actually, although we'd probably have a hard time getting there and back in one day, Trowa, are you listening?" Duo had been going on excitedly about our excursion to the Inuit settlement, but Trowa apparently had stopped listening somewhere along the line. Who could blame him? Duo's ramblings were stifling.

The Heavyarms pilot was dressed in long sleeves, but had them rolled up to his elbows. He had creases under his eyes, as if he had been sleepless for many nights in a row. He limped heavily on the leg that he had injured when venturing outside. But, since he was up and about, it couldn't be a very serious wound. Trowa cut a deep slice in the coal-black meat, and sighed heavily, "Inside's still raw…"

I was going to ask Trowa what kind of meat needed to be burned to Hell and back before it was properly prepared. Before I could speak, Heero sputtered out: "What happened to all the guns?"

Trowa kept his eye on the stove, but softly answered, "Destroyed." He paused and took a long breath, like one about to dive into a story when lacking the heart to discuss such topics, but he simply said, "Quatre."

"What about the one he keeps for… protection?" I asked, hesitating because, after all, Trowa was the reason Quatre had felt it necessary to arm himself. Was Quatre trying to get some kind of edge over all of us? Duo sat in a corner, suddenly silent. Heero was taking off his top parka, dusting snow on the ground.

"He said they were a hazard," Trowa's voice was distant, strangely choked. Even his facial expressions depressed me. "And… I agree."

"It isn't likely that we'd need all of them," Heero commented. "But I don't like the idea of being out here with no way to defend ourselves." Both Duo and I nodded in unison. I knew it wasn't probable that we would be attacked by outside forces in this desolate location… I wondered what kind of enemy Heero was thinking about… "He shouldn't have left us defenseless."

Heero wasn't defenseless. He still had his handgun from before we'd came here. I asked, "Are all the guns gone?"

Trowa didn't answer, but something flickered in his emerald eyes, and he looked from Heero, to Duo, to me. His lips curled into a frown, and for some reason, I felt his fear. Fear of what, I could not be sure. Finally, he turned off the stove, pushed the meat and its acrid fumes away to the side of the counter and said, "You'll have lots of questions… Come on…" He turned and limped away, leaving the three of us startled, but eager to follow.

- - - - - 

First thing coming first, Heero and I shed the thick layers of clothing that had saved our skins from freezing during the perilous journey. I was very happy to be home, but the curiosity in my gut roused by Trowa's hintings kept a dark shroud on my thoughts. I was also less than thrilled by the prospect of Duo and Heero having a nice, romantic evening together somewhere down the line. God damn it...

I cursed Yuy as I watched him pull off the last of his sweaters, the woolen fabric pulling up his undershirt and revealing a tan, muscled stomach that looked as if the sculptor of the David had chiseled it out of the finest stone. Unconsciously, I patted my own front, feeling the lean and hard skin with stinging cold fingers. I was in good shape, but no six-pack… I felt myself flare with jealousy, just as a very odd and foreign noise reached my ears. I thought the sound might have been a figment of my imagination.

Laughter?

I looked at Heero, to see if he'd heard it too. But he was putting his boots back on and was slightly surprised to see me staring at him. His nimble fingers fumbled on the soaked shoelaces and he shot me a dirty look, like it was my fault. I could feel him trying to block me out as his dark blue eyes returned to the laces. It wasn't anything new, actually. Heero had been snubbing me on purpose for a while now, passing me without a word, averting his gaze. He was the only person who refused to play me in chess. Even Duo would play from time to time, and Duo sucked at chess.

He stood up slowly, finally bringing his eyes to meet mine, with an evident, almost hostile tint of dread and grudging. It always made me smirk, knowing I had this kind of effect on him. But, today was a little different. Today Heero returned my smile with one of his own, a confident, knowing smile. My jaw clenched, my nostrils flared. But, instead, I just turned away.

Heero and I hurried to catch up with Duo and Trowa. We found them at the entrance to the main library. The door was open and the flickering glimmer from a roaring fire framed a very surprised Duo in the doorway, outlined by the crimson flare. The clear sound of laughter floated out into the hallways, assaulting the dark passageways that had been devoid of such merriment for ages. Then I noticed there were two sets of laughing voices. And although I had never heard Trowa laugh, I did not think it was his voice.

Heero pushed Duo into the room to see what all of the commotion was about. I nearly had to shove both the Perfect Soldier and the cheery American into the library, for he stopped almost immediately upon entering. I peeked over Duo's shoulder and also froze.

Quatre was laughing merrily, running around the room with what appeared to be a toy soldier in his hand. Chasing him, also squealing in delight, was a young boy with very long blond hair.

"What… the… fuck…?" Duo gagged out the mutual feeling for all three of us. Heero recovered fastest, moving deeper into the dusty library. His face returned to its usual, stony form, and he casually glanced around the room, eyes finally falling on another stranger, a blond girl who was poking a gigantic mound of dust and debris in a corner of the room.

Heero's voice was not as calm as his mask; he called out suspiciously, "Quatre?" The blonde stopped running, the young boy slamming into him at full force, knocking the soldier from his grasp. As Quatre turned to face us, the boy let out a delighted whoop and pounced on the toy, sending up loud giggles and sound effects like a GI Joe toy. He began to smash at the fallen toy soldier with one of his own.

"It's good to see you back." Quatre smiled. His voice was soft, not half as harsh or angry as he had taken to speaking with during the past few days. I wondered if he had made up with Trowa?

I turned my focus back to the strange new boy. He was actually almost as tall as Quatre was, but very thin and gangly. He had a very light moustache, the same color as his hair. I was only able to notice this small detail in the dim light of the library because the boy's skin was a sharply different color than his fair, scrawny locks. It was blanched and disgustingly pale white. I might have thought the teen boy was gravely ill if he hadn't jumped to his feet with a soft laugh, toy soldier in hand. He continued to zoom around the room, darting around the numerous empty shelves.

Quatre looked at the three of us standing there expectantly. Heero's cool façade didn't fool the Arab's perception. The Sandrock pilot gave us a meaningful nod, and, before Duo could voice the first of many obvious questions, called out:

"Hey Trowa! Is the food ready yet?" Quatre asked this with enthusiasm.

Across the room, near the little girl, Trowa simply nodded and began walking back to the door that lead to the kitchen. Quatre cupped his hands to his mouth and, taking a deep breath, shouted, "Jorgen! Hey Jorgen!" A voice imitating pistol shots giggled out from the furthest end of the library, where no one had ever taken the time to install any sort of lights. The bookshelves back there had been toppled to the floor, splintered and broken. But the boy didn't come until Quatre had called his name twice more.

The young boy, Jorgen, finally came running, and without even glancing at any of us, jumped at Quatre and tugged his arm, begging him to come play in a sing-song voice, "Please please please Quatre! Just a few more minutes! I wanna play War with you again!"

Quatre shook his head; smile never fading as he coaxed the energetic youth, "Sorry Jorgen, we'll play more later. Yes, I promise. Come on, go to Trowa and get something to eat with Svetlana." Jorgen ran over to where Trowa was standing with the blonde girl, and Quatre called, "Svetlana! Go eat with your brother." So much like a mother…

But Svetlana remained immovable over the pile of dust and woodchips. She methodically poked the heap with a stick every few seconds. Trowa also tried rousing her, but she didn't respond. Then, her brother called her name:

"Svetlana!"

She dropped the stick, stood straight up.

"Svetlana!"

She looked over in our direction. I heard Heero let out a hiss from in-between clenched teeth. The girl had about half a dozen different scars and welts on her face and neck. Her green eyes were filled with a detached emerald film, and she was trembling and seemed on the very verge of tears. I had no idea what could frighten her so.

But Jorgen called her over, "Come eat!" And she began to walk over with Trowa, never moving more than a foot away from his side. She appeared to be 10 or 11 and only reached the tall acrobat's elbows.

They walked out of the room to eat. What I presumed to be their meal could only have been the terrible looking meat Trowa had been butchering earlier. I felt sorry for the young children. Yes, they were still children, even though the boy was most likely only slightly younger than us. The reminder came to my mind slowly, as it always seemed to; that's right, most people my age are still, more or less, children.

A volley of questions assaulted Quatre, but the general theme of the inquiry was, "Where did these strangers come from?"

The Winner heir took a deep breath and at first only said, "We found them." He paused, and his aquamarine gaze rested on Duo. "We found them in a hidden room below the cellar."

Quatre had to wait another few minutes before the collective uproar from Heero, Duo and myself died down. After promising to tell the whole story, he sat down in a chair near the fire and began:

"After you all left I was sleeping still. I had a dream." His voice was low and hushed, as if he feared unfriendly ears. "I… I don't remember it… but it woke me up. I couldn't fall back to sleep. Something just wouldn't let me. It was like the feeling you get when you think somebody is calling your name, but they're just too far away still, you can't hear them yet… I went to get something to eat, but the feeling kept getting stronger. I'd check on Trowa, and he was still asleep, but I knew I had heard them. The voices sounded scared and angry and… and I just had to search for them."

"Trowa woke up and found me still looking. He helped, despite his leg. He wouldn't listen to me when I said that he should still stay off of it for a few days. We got to the stairway to the cellar and… and… I thought I could feel something, something strong and desperate. It wasn't in the cellar though, at least we couldn't get to it from there."

"There was a trap door in one of the closets in the hallway off of the main library. It led to a part of the cellar I'd never seen before. We found another trap door there, leading down into the building's sub-structure." Quatre grimaced, loath to recall the sight he eventually forced himself to describe, "They were in this huge room, in cages. Locked in a cage together… The other bodi… people… they… they were all there too."

"Was it like the diary described?" Heero asked. I thought about the deluded ramblings of the criminal who had been driven mad by cabin fever and suspicion of his own scummy partners. The passages had seemed something out of a gruesome horror story. Who could have possibly believed it?

Quatre met the cold Prussian blue eyes and nodded, "Exactly. And I got Jorgen to talk a little about the kidnappers. A lot of names and descriptions match the memoir."

"The others are all dead then..." I thought aloud.

"Guess ol' Maxwell isn't as insane as everyone thought, huh?" Duo spat sourly.

At this, Heero turned to his braided desire and said, "I'm sorry for doubting you Duo." I almost spat in disgust. So fucking dramatic Yuy… But, as I saw the Deathscythe pilots' features soften and the burning anger subside in his indigo eyes, I also knew Heero had struck a nerve.

"Seriously," Heero pressed, putting a hand on Duo's shoulder and turning the black-clad youth so their eyes met. "I just couldn't understand how it was possible that you could know something like that was happening." I turned away and pretended to pay them no mind. "I'll believe in you from here on out," Heero continued, softly and sincerely.

"Then the two are the only survivors?" I turned my attention on Quatre.

"Thank you Heero," Duo whispered.

"Yes..." Quatre's smile had faded since the children left. The signs of stress and wear suddenly became visible in him. He slumped in the seat and muttered, "There are still some of their remains down there."

"We should at least bury whatever's left," Duo said.

"It will be quite a bit of work just to get under that snow," I pointed out grimly. "In the summer it will all melt and then, unless we reach the dirt now…"

"You want to just leave them then?" Duo glared at me with a disgusted scowl.

"We'll do what we can to give them a proper burial," Heero broke in, sending another warning stare at me. "But if we don't finish before the plane is ready, I don't want to compromise our situation any more."

Quatre's brows crinkled. He asked, hope sliding into his tired body, "What plane?"

- - - - - 

We told our story about the Inuit settlement and how Heero planned on coercing the old transporter into letting us borrow his plane in a few days. All of our spirits were visibly lifted as we spoke about our escape. We even discussed some plans to recover the Gundams and get in contact with the scientists. Duo was so excited that he even threw in the shaman's lore-tale about the Wendigo demon. As he concluded the story, he added, "…and Wufei actually believed the whole thing, even after always denying that ghosts or Shinigami don't exist."

"I never admitted-" I started to protest, but the energetic orphan carried on:

"Oh! But your expression was fucking priceless Wu-man!" Duo grinned from ear to ear. "You fell for that story hook-line-and-sinker!"

"It was just a story…" I muttered.

Quatre was still looking somewhat grim. "Stories can have more truth in them than anyone cares to think." He picked up a book from the table nearest his chair and fingered the pages carefully. It was a small black journal.

"What's that?" I asked, eager to change the subject.

"A diary by a French painter," Sandrock's pilot replied. "He was one of the first people put in the service of the baron who had this place built. I found it some time ago… but I haven't had any lessons in French since I was a kid, so I was very slow reading it."

"Woooo," Duo whistled. "That thing looks ancient. A good read Quat?"

Quatre shook his head, and then took a moment to brush the hair out of his face. His hair was getting long, and in a few more days the golden mess would be hiding his eyes. He said, "I think that's better to leave for later, when all of us are here and the children are asleep."

"Secrets secrets are no fun," Duo wagged a finger disapprovingly. "But at least tell me this, what happened to that girl's face? What was her name?"

"Svetlana. She won't really say…" Quatre frowned, letting the book drop to his side. "Her mental development is severely stunted. Ten years of her life, a vast majority of it, was spent down there in, in _that place_... She speaks sometimes, but she only will really talk to Trowa. He was the one who picked her up and carried her up-"

"I get the feeling you're avoiding saying something," Heero leaned in closer, his eyes burning into Quatre's.

It was obvious that Quatre wanted to leave some matters for another day, but the three of us had plenty of questions and issues that we didn't want to wait on. Extra suspicion that he might be hiding things from us would not be a pleasant affair.

Quatre stood up and faced the Japanese soldier. The young Arab had a saddened, but resolved and solemn face. I wondered that I had never seen him looking so rugged and weary, battle-hardened but still gentle all at the same time. He turned away and grabbed a poker to tend the fireplace.

"The leader of the kidnappers made frequent visits to the dungeon." Quatre's voice was soft but level, seemingly uncaring, as if he were discussing what to have for breakfast. "He tortured them in front of one another with various… contraptions and machines, all these fucking old bastard's machines. But it didn't end there. Later, Jorgen tells, the leader had the captives do things to each other…" Here something caught in Quatre's throat, and he paused.

"He gave some of them chances to get extra food by starving the others. He made them fight and whip each other to avoid their own torture… Even rape… From what Jorgen said, and I believe him with all my heart, the sadist always got a special thrill out of pitting loved ones against each other… Husband and wife, father and son… siblings… They were family!"

"But then, the kidnappers stopped coming…" Quatre gave a sharp stab and knocked one of the dying logs off the top of the burning pile. It rolled off, sputtering and burning alone in a back corner of the cavernous fireplace. "And they just kept on hurting and torturing each other on their own, even without the fucking bastard forcing them to! Going mad, killing the sane ones... Every day, every day on their own…" The blonde's anger and outrage had flared to its highest peak, but as the story wound down only his sorrow and lack of faith in humanity lingered.

"Imagine," Quatre's eyes were brimmed with tears, but he choked out the words, unable to stymie the rush of feelings that overwhelmed him. "Imagine a decade without sunlight! A decade of constant suffering and hatred… I… I couldn't ever fight for that long, especially against people I cared about… loved…" One tear alone broke free, clinging to his eyelashes.

Then the tears fell in earnest, one after another trickling down Quatre's cheeks. "But since you asked about her scars, I'll tell you. She told Trowa that they are from her brother."

- - - - - 

Heero put the question to Jorgen later that night. We stayed in the library and threw on a fresh batch of logs to blaze. I found myself switching between watching Duo and Heero flirt (their hands occasionally finding the other's and giving a soft, if unsure, touch) and watching the children play. Jorgen always ran around, playing 'War' with Quatre, while Svetlana crouched over her beloved pile of filth, humming a tune with no clear melody. For the five of us the day had been very long, and our energy was quickly ebbing. Even Heero's eyes were drooping when Quatre decided it was time for the youngsters to retire for the night.

"Jorgen! Svetlana! Time for bed!" He called the two siblings over to his side and kissed them both on the forehead. He asked Trowa, "Would you mind putting them to bed? He's absolutely drained me. Oh!" Quatre exclaimed in after thought. "Could you also put the toy soldiers away? Thanks! But please don't let Jorgen see where you hide them." Trowa nodded, unblinking to the multiple requests. Quatre smiled, exhausted. "He would sneak out of bed just to get them if he knew where they were."

"Jorgen, come here for a minute!" Heero called out, summoning the boy back over to us. Trowa left with Svetlana and the box of toys. Heero gave the boy an accusing leer and immediately asked, "Have you ever hit your sister?"

Jorgen looked stunned, and he took several short stammers before answering, "No." He tapped his foot nervously on the floor, his eyes glued to the wooden floorboards.

"You shouldn't lie," Duo growled, making the poor kid step back from the indigo wrath.

Heero repeated the question, but Jorgen again said, "No."

"Boys who lie go to Hell and fry," Duo warned darkly. The child cringed.

I decided to try a different approach, "What kind of games did you play when you were down there?" I asked. Jorgen shrank back even further, retreating into Quatre's arms. "Well?" I persisted.

"NO!" A shrill wail stunned all of us. Jorgen trembled from head to toe. He cried, "Don't hurt me!"

Where had I heard a voice sound like that before?

"Shh… Shh… Don't worry," Quatre patted the boy's head soothingly. "Nobody here will hurt you. Don't be afraid. It's all right. Don't worry. Please just answer Wufei and then you can go up to bed."

"We played War, &… & Blind man's Bluff and we played Mommy & Daddy," The youngster murmured.

Duo leaned forward in his chair, "How do you play 'mommy & daddy'?"

"You said only one question!" Jorgen protested, turning to Quatre. But, after another minute of soft words and tender caresses, the boy was ready to speak. "We try to make a family 'cuz that's what Mommy & Daddy do. So we fuck."

The word fell like a thunderbolt. Quatre gave another pat on Jorgen's head and escorted him upstairs. Duo stood up, as if to leave, but he only walked over to the fire. Within a minute, Heero had left his seat to join him, leaving me to my thoughts.

It was incredible that mere children could face such gross violation and sadistic torture. All for... all for what? For what purpose? I pushed my thoughts on those cruelties into the back corner of my mind. The Wing pilot was holding the beautiful American in his arms, their heads pressed close, whispering. Duo's hands firmly gripped Heero, returning the embrace.

Yes, the sight made me intensely jealous. What did that bastard Heero know about love? Or about Duo for that matter? I scoffed silently. I was the only one who had any real idea what kind of person Duo was. On the surface he was the friendly, witty mischief-maker. But under his skin, in all his mind and soul, a great conflict raged endlessly. I hadn't noticed it for a while, even when it was first pushed to the surface, broken through his cheery mask. It had nearly driven Duo to insanity. The containment here in the Arctic, this imprisonment had shown Duo's true self. The bars on the beast's cage were now flimsy and bent out of shape.

But I couldn't help but think how they did fit the role each other needed. Heero, the perfect killing machine and Duo, Shinigami who would never be appalled by heartless murder. Duo would support the whole-sale slaughter and cold blooded killings, and Heero needed that support, the acknowledgment that he had done a good job completing the mission. Almost perfect, I mused… But, I wasn't giving up just yet!

Trowa and Quatre returned. Heero addressed them, "So, what's in that journal?" Both Quatre and Duo heaved loud sighs at the very same time, and Trowa was caught in the middle of a yawn. Weariness showed in all of us… Hadn't this day dragged on enough? I wondered.

"It is important," Quatre conceded, but went on to say, "But today has been hard on all of us. It's probably better to start with it tomorrow morning. Some things are better discussed in daylight."

"Hn. OK," Heero approved. "But we only had 3 and a half hours of full sunlight today, and we're going to need all that time to dig those graves."

"Eh…" Trowa seemed to want to say something, but his mouth just hung open for a full minute of silence. I was used to the Heavyarms' pilot's lack of words, but he almost seemed struck mute by something. He left. Quatre followed after bidding everyone 'Goodnight'.

Heero and Duo also began to head for the door, but I called out, "Heero!" He turned. "I'd like to talk to you for a bit." Duo gave me a questioning look, but Heero just grunted and started to come back across the room.

Then Duo caught Heero by the arm, spun him back around. I can only guess the surprise in Heero's usually steely cobalt eyes as Duo suddenly leaned in and kissed him. The stoic youth was as startled as I, but he quickly wrapped his powerful arms around Duo, holding him closer. I could not even take a breath. The kiss ended. "Goodnight," Duo breathed. He left.

"So," Heero began, his voice showing he was on edge and that this was the last thing he wanted to do right now. "What is it?" I didn't answer right away, gave him a second to wait. I drew myself out of the chair and stretched with a yawn. "What is it?" Heero asked again.

"Do you think you won?" I asked. 01 seemed confused, so I clarified, "Have you won Duo's love?" Now Heero was plainly struck speechless. "You think he'll really want someone like you when the war is over?"

"What's it matter to you?" Heero spat defensively. "My business is-"

"This is my business too!" I cut him off, walking forward. My hard words were the catalyst that made him ball his fists. "You think you can play Cassanova and win him while I just sit by like a defeated dog?"

Heero smiled, a wide, malicious flash of his perfect white teeth. The challenge came, "What are you going to do about it Wufei?"

I closed the gap between us to a few yards, yards filled with tension and anticipation like the atmosphere on a battlefield before the first shot. Wordlessly, our alliance had broken, our camaraderie snapped. Now we were plain opponents ready to duel over this conflict. We sized each other up for a while.

"Ch!" I spat at his feet, now only six steps away. "I'll do as I please!" I let the anger, the jealousy and hate flare up in my tone. "I advise you to back off." I cracked my knuckles. "You don't have a fucking clue as to what's really going on."

"I don't retreat unless ordered to," Heero played the calm, emotionless hand. He turned his head from one side to another in a quick motion, his neck cracked loudly. He was on the balls of his feet. "Some battles are won by the desire of the heart and the condition of the soul." I hesitated. These words I would never expect from Heero. "Win him? I already have," Heero boasted. I readied myself… "It was his idea to go out to dinner after we-"

I lunged.

Heero dodged my initial attack with ease, stepping back and to his left. But I followed after him with a swift series of three punches. Two landed on opposite sides of his face. And even with my full force behind the blows, Heero just grunted and continued to retreat. Quick jabs weren't going to do it. I took a second to get my feet under me, squaring up against him.

The calculating killer used the small window to change to the offensive, and I found myself following my instincts, blocking his punches, which were surprisingly quick and accurate. Heero was pulling nothing, and I realized, even as I blocked another right hook with my forearm, that one good shot to my head was all he was looking for.

Then, for a moment, Heero rocked back onto his heels, and I stopped, caught between my desire to pummel him and my caution of any trap. It turned out that I was already in the thick of the web; Heero gave a fierce snarl and lowered his head, barreling down on me without even raising his fists.

There was no chance to evade, so I did the only thing I could think of. I too gave a war-cry and lunged. The top of our heads cracked together with a sickening slam and we both locked our arms around the other, planting our feet into the ground. Our eyes were perfectly level. Only a few centimeters away, I could smell his bad breath.

The stalemate persisted for some time, neither of us able to gain the advantage needed to execute a throw. Heero's strength and my balance made it a perfectly even match. I smiled as I saw the strain in Heero's face, the bulging of his neck and his ragged breath. I blocked out the pain in my leg, the first real test of my injured body. Then I threw myself backwards, pulling Yuy with me.

I hit the floor first, and nearly cried out as Heero immediately landed on me, using his elbows to take a shot at my chest. Spiting the pain, I kept rolling, and as the ceiling and the floor and the bookcases all seemed to spin, I knew Heero would be unable to stop the reversal. But, with a grunt and a bearing of his teeth, Heero's arms locked into place, his grip on my arms turned into an iron vice. My head made a slick crack as I was pinned to the floor. Heero was grinning with an insane glimmer in his eyes that I had never seen, except in the thick of battle. He laughed:

"Duo's mine." Then Heero surprised me again; "You'll never beat me because you don't really love him."

"How would you know?" I shouted, and took my left leg and sent a blow into his side with my knee. He'd failed to pin my legs. I rolled away quickly. Heero took his time getting to his feet, coughing and gagging for air. As I also tried to muster a second wind, I scoffed, "You think you're what he needs? You're hardly human! You're just a tool used to kill people! You may look hot, but nobody could love a machine!"

We were both on our feet. Heero's eyes never wavering, he said, "You don't get it. You won't ever be with Duo. You don't really love him."

Again I roared, "HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?"

"Because I see the way you look at him, the way you regard him as a simple prize to be claimed," I would never have guessed that Heero played such mind games during combat. But… this wasn't like any battle Heero had ever fought. There were no commands or mission objectives, only his thoughts and emotions to guide him. "It's lust, it's dirty, it's greedy!"

I sprang directly at Heero, tired of his talk. Did these words make a difference? Of course not! The Wing pilot brought his hands up to guard his face, but, the blow did not fall… at least, not from the direction he had expected. In the last second before I reached him, I jumped to the side. He was guarding an attack from the front and so my right fist landed perfectly on the side of his head. Now it was my turn to smile.

But my delight was short lived. Heero was still standing. I drew myself up into a stance again, surprised, but unwilling to show that he had surpassed my expectations. His stamina was god-like. It didn't make sense. That blow should have knocked him unconscious! At least it should have made him dizzy or see stars.

"If that," Heero cracked his neck from side to side again, his smile gone. But the fire in his eyes remained, smaller in the pupils than before, yet many times more intense. "If that was all of your 'love' for Duo, than this fight is over!"

Heero came for the finishing move, his eyes told me everything in the few brief moments before his right arm shot out to end me. He did love Duo, and Duo had, at least in Heero's eyes, returned those feelings in more than one way.

I should have used my left to parry, should have maybe even grabbed Heero's hand as it reached out to strike. Then all I would need to do would be to use Heero's weight and momentum to throw or trip him up. The parry would have left him open for a good second or two.

But I didn't do those things. I froze. My mind seemed to focus on a single thing, and, unfortunately for me, it was not the fight.

Heero loved Duo.

Duo loved Heero.

The punch landed directly on my left temple. The world swam in creeping darkness, and I was aware that I was sinking towards the floor under failing legs. I reached out to execute the parry, too late, and although I have no recollection of it, I believe I grabbed Heero by the head and pulled him down on top of me.

- - - - - 

I awoke to a tremendous headache, a rattled and confused mental state, and I was only partially aware of shouting coming from downstairs.

I could see out of my left eye again.

-end "Frostbitten" Part 10 in

Souls Disappear in the 


End file.
